UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


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vLzji 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

ELIZABETH   AND   HER   GERMAN   GARDEN 

ADVENTURES   OF   ELIZABETH   IN   RUGEN 

FRAULEIN   SCHMIDT   AND    MR.  ANSTRUTHER 

PRINCESS   PRISCILLA'S   FORTNIGHT 

THE   SOLITARY   SUMMER 

THE   CARAVANERS 


4RT«"R- 
1-  ITLE. 


"Tell  me,  Little  One,'"  he  said  when  she  rejoined  him, 
"ivill  you  marry  me?" 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE 


By  the  Author  of 
"  Elizabeth  and  Her  German  Garden  " 


Illustrated  by  Arthur  Litle 


GARDEN   CITY  NEW    YORK 

DOUBLED  AY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 
1914 


•  *■      •    •       » 


'   »      « 


4     *   * 


»    ,  *     "*< 


•         '|«4    |«4     M 


Copyright,  1914,  by 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE   &  COMPANY 

All  rights  reserved,  including  that  of 

translation  into  foreign  languages, 

including  the  Scandinavian 


? 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

"Tell  me,   Little  One,''  he  said  when  she  rejoined 

him,  "will  you  marry  me?  ".      .      .      .     Frontispiece 

FACING    PACK 

"Then  why,"  she  asked,  with  the  courage  of  curi- 
osity, "  are  you  a  pastor?  " 24 

"  Will  you  not,  Ingeborg,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  call- 
ing her  for  the  first  time  by  her  name,  "cut 
the  cake?" 58 

"  But— father,  I've  been  doing  it  too  "        ....        80 

He  could  no  longer  walk  around  his  own  garden  with- 
out meeting  an  interlaced  couple      ....      120 

"You  are  married  to  her?"  asked  the  elder  Frau 
Dremmel,  turning  her  pebble  eyes  slowly  from 
one  to  the  other 134 

Especially  her  gaze  lingered  on  her  feet.     Becoming 

aware  of  this,  Ingeborg  tried  to  hide  them        .      158 

"  But  these  are  very  wonderful,"  she  said,  taking  up 

the  sketches.     "  I  wish  I  were  really  like  that  "     346 


208580 


PART  I 


The  Pastor's  Wife 


CHAPTER  I 

ON  THAT  April  afternoon  all  the  wallflowers  of 
the  world  seemed  to  her  released  body  to  have 
been  piled  up  at  the  top  of  Regent  Street  so 
that  she  should  walk  in  fragrance. 

She  was  in  this  exalted  mood,  thelittle  mouse-coloured 
young  lady  slipping  along  southwards  from  Harley 
Street,  because  she  had  just  had  a  tooth  out.  After 
weeks  of  miserable  indifference  she  was  quivering  with 
responsiveness  again,  feeling  the  relish  of  life,  the  tang 
of  it,  the  jollity  of  all  this  bustle  and  hurrying  past  of 
busy  people.  And  the  beauty  of  it,  the  beauty  of  it,  she 
thought,  fighting  a  tendency  to  loiter  in  the  middle  of 
the  traffic  to  have  a  good  look — the  beauty  of  the  sky 
across  the  roofs  of  the  houses,  the  delicacy  of  the  misti- 
ness that  hung  down  there  over  the  curve  of  the  street, 
the  loveliness  of  the  lights  beginning  to  shine  in  the  shop 
windows.  Surely  the  colour  of  London  was  an  exquisite 
thing.  It  was  like  a  pearl  that  late  afternoon,  something 
very  gentle  and  pale,  with  faint  blue  shadows.  And  as 
for  its  smell,  she  doubted,  indeed,  whether  heaven  itself 
could  smell  better,  certainly  not  so  interesting.  "And 
anyhow,"  she  said  to  herself,  lifting  her  head  a  moment 
in  appreciation,  "it  can't  possibly  smell  more  alive." 
She  herself  had  certainly  never  been  more  alive. 
She  felt  electric.     She  would  not  have  been  surprised 


4  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

if  sparks  had  come  crackling  out  of  the  tips  of  her  sober 
gloves.  Not  only  was  she  suddenly  and  incredibly 
relieved  from  acute  pain,  but  for  the  first  time  in  her 
life  of  twenty-two  years  she  was  alone.  This  by  itself, 
without  the  business  of  the  tooth,  was  enough  to  make 
a  dutiful,  willing,  and  hardworked  daughter  tingle. 
She  would  have  tingled  if  by  some  glorious  chance  a 
whole  free  day  had  come  to  her  merely  inside  the  grey 
walls  of  the  garden  at  home;  but  to  be  free  and  idle  in 
London,  to  have  them  all  so  far  away,  her  family  down 
there  in  the  west,  to  have  them  so  necessarily  silent,  so 
oddly  vague  already  and  pallid  in  the  distance!  Yet 
she  had  only  left  them  that  morning;  it  was  only  nine 
hours  since  her  father,  handsome  as  an  archangel, 
silvery  of  head  and  gaitered  of  leg,  had  waved  her  off 
from  the  doorstep  with  offended  resignation.  "And  do 
not  return,  Ingeborg,"  he  had  called  into  the  fly  where 
she  sat  holding  her  face  and  trying  not  to  rock,  "till 
you  are  completely  set  right.  Even  a  week.  Even  ten 
days.     Have  them  all  seen  to." 

For  the  collapse  of  Ingeborg,  daunted  into  just  a 
silent  feverish  thing  of  pain,  had  convulsed  the  ordered 
life  at  home.  Her  family  bore  it  for  a  week  with  perfect 
manners  and  hardly  a  look  of  reproach.  Then  they 
sent  her  to  the  Redchester  dentist,  a  hitherto  sufficient 
man,  who  tortured  her  with  tentative  stoppings  and 
turned  what  had  been  dull  and  smooth  into  excitement 
and  jerks.  Then,  unable  to  resist  a  feeling  that  self- 
control  would  have  greatly  helped,  it  began  to  find  the 
etiquette  of  Christian  behaviour,  which  insisted  on  its 
going  on  being  silent  while  she  more  and  more  let  herself 
go,  irksome.  The  Bishop  wanted  things  in  vain.  Three 
times  he  had  to  see  himself  off  alone  at  the  station  and 
not  be  met  when  he  came  back.    Buttons,  because  they 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  5 

were  not  tightened  on  in  time,  burst  from  his  gaiters, 
and  did  it  in  remote  places  like  railway  carriages.  Let- 
ters were  unanswered,  important  ones.  Engagements, 
vital  ones,  through  lack  of  reminders  went  unkept.  At 
last  it  became  plain,  when  she  seemed  not  even  to  wish 
to  answer  when  spoken  to  or  to  move  when  called,  that 
this  apathy  and  creeping  away  to  hide  could  not  further 
be  endured.  Against  all  tradition,  against  every  home 
principle,  they  let  a  young  unmarried  daughter  loose. 
With  offended  reluctance  they  sent  her  to  London  to  a 
celebrity  in  teeth — after  all  it  was  not  as  if  she  had  been 
going  just  to  enjoy  herself — "And  your  aunt  will 
please  forgive  us,"  said  the  Bishop,  for  "taking  her  in 
this  manner  unawares." 

The  aunt,  a  serious  strong  lady,  was  engaged  for 
political  meetings  in  the  north,  and  had  gone  away  to 
them  that  very  morning,  leaving  a  letter  and  her  house 
at  Ingeborg's  disposal  for  so  long  as  the  dentist  needed 
her.  The  dentist,  being  the  best  that  money  could  buy, 
hardly  needed  her  at  all.  He  pounced  unerringly  and 
at  once  on  the  right  tooth  and  pulled  it  out.  There 
were  no  stoppings,  no  delays,  no  pain,  and  no  aunt. 
Never  was  a  life  more  beautifully  cleared.  Ingeborg 
went  away  down  Harley  Street  free,  "and  with  ten 
pounds  in  her  pocket.  For  the  rest  of  this  one  day,  for 
an  hour  or  two  to-morrow  morning  before  setting  out 
for  Paddington  and  home,  she  could  do  exactly  as  she 
liked. 

'  Why,  there's  nothing  to  prevent  me  going  anywhere 
this  evening,"  she  thought,  stopping  dead  as  the  full 
glory  of  the  situation  slowly  dawned  on  her.  'Why.  I 
could  go  out  somewhere  really  grand  to  dinner,  just  as 
people  do  I  expect  in  all  the  books  I'm  not  let  read,  and 
then  I  could  go  to  the  play — nobody  could  prevent  me. 


6  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

Why,  I  could  go  to  a  music-hall  if  I  chose,  and  still 
nobody  could  prevent  me!" 

Audacious  imaginings  that  made  her  laugh — she  had 
not  laughed  for  weeks — darted  in  and  out  of  her  busy 
brain.  She  saw  herself  in  her  mouse-coloured  dress 
reducing  waiters  in  marble  and  gilt  places  to  respect 
and  slavery  by  showing  them  her  ten  pounds.  She  built 
up  lurid  fabrics  of  possible  daring  deeds,  and  smiled  at 
the  reflection  of  herself  in  shop  windows  as  she  passed, 
at  the  sobriety,  the  irreproachableness  of  the  sheath 
containing  these  molten  imaginings.  Why,  she  might 
hire  a  car — just  telephone,  and  there  you  were  with  it 
round  in  five  minutes,  and  go  off  in  the  twilight  to 
Richmond  Park  or  Windsor.  She  had  never  been  to 
Richmond  Park  or  Windsor;  she  had  never  been  any- 
where; but  she  was  sure  there  would  be  bats  and  stars 
out  there,  and  water,  and  the  soft  duskiness  of  trees  and 
the  smell  of  wet  earth,  and  she  could  drive  about  them 
a  little,  slowly,  so  as  to  feel  it  all,  and  then  come  back 
and  have  supper  somewhere — have  supper  at  the  Ritz, 
she  thought,  of  which  she  had  read  hastily  out  of  the 
corner  of  an  eye  between  two  appearances  of  the  Bishop, 
in  the  more  interesting  portions  of  the  Times — just 
saunter  in,  you  know.  Or  she  could  have  dinner  first; 
yes,  dinner  first — dinner  at  Claridge's.  No,  not  at 
Claridge's;  she  had  an  aunt  who  stayed  there,  another 
one,  her  mother's  sister,  rich  and  powerful,  and  it  was 
always  best  not  to  stir  up  rich  and  powerful  aunts. 
Dinner  at  the  Thackeray  Hotel,  perhaps.  That  was 
where  her  father's  relations  stayed,  fine-looking  serious 
men  who  once  were  curates  and,  yet  earlier,  good  and 
handsome  babies.  It  was  near  the  British  Museum, 
she  had  heard.  Its  name  and  surroundings  suggested 
magnificence   of  a  nobler   sort   than    the  Ritz.    Yes, 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  7 

she  would  dine  at  the  Thackeray  Hotel  and  be 
splendid. 

Here,  coming  to  a  window  full  of  food,  she  became 
aware  that,  wonderfully,  and  for  the  first  time  for  weeks, 
she  was  hungry;  so  hungry  that  she  didn't  want  dinner 
or  supper  or  anything  future,  but  something  now.  She 
went  in;  and  all  her  gilded  visions  of  the  Ritz  and  the 
Thackeray  Hotel  were  swamped  in  one  huge  cup  (she 
felt  how  legitimate  and  appropriate  a  drink  it  was  for  a 
bishop's  daughter  without  a  chaperon,  and  ordered  the 
biggest  size  costing  four-pence)  of  Aerated  Bread  Shop 
cocoa. 

It  was  six  o'clock  when  she  emerged,  amazingly 
nourished,  from  that  strange  place  where  long-backed 
elderly  men  with  tired  eyes  were  hurriedly  eating 
poached  eggs  on  chilly  little  clothless  marble  tables,  and 
continued  down  Regent  Street. 

She  now  felt  strangely  settled  in  her  mind.  She  no 
longer  wanted  to  go  to  the  Ritz.  Indeed  the  notion  of 
dining  anywhere  with  the  cocoa  clothing  her  internally 
as  with  a  garment — a  thick  winter  garment,  almost  she 
thought  like  the  closer  kinds  of  fur — was  revolting. 
She  still  felt  enterprising,  but  a  little  clogged.  She 
thought  now  more  of  things  like  fresh  air  and  exercise. 
Not  now  for  her  the  heat  and  glitter  of  a  music-hall. 
There  was  a  taste  in  that  pure  drink  that  was  irrecon- 
cilable with  music-halls,  a  satisfying  property  in  its 
unadulteratedness,  its  careful  cleanliness,  that  reminded 
her  she  was  the  daughter  of  a  bishop.  Walking  away 
from  the  Aerated  Bread  Shop  rather  gravely,  she  re- 
membered that  she  had  a  mother  on  a  sofa;  an  only 
sister  who  was  so  beautiful  that  it  was  touching;  and  a 
class  of  boys,  once  unruly  and  now  looking  up  to  her — 
in  fact,  that  she  had  a  position  to  keep  up.     She  was 


8  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

still  happy,  but  happy  now  in  a  thoroughly  nice  way; 
and  she  would  probably  have  gone  back  in  this  warmed 
and  solaced  condition  to  her  aunt's  house  in  Bedford 
Square  and  an  evening  with  a  book  and  an  early  bed  if 
her  eye  had  not  been  caught  by  a  poster  outside  an  office 
sort  of  place  she  was  passing,  a  picture  of  water  and 
mountains,  with  written  on  it  in  big  letters: 

A  WEEK  IN  LOVELY  LUCERNE 
SEVEN  DAYS  FOR  SEVEN  GUINEAS 

Those  Who  Intend   to  Join   Next  Trip   Inquire 

Within 

Now  Ingeborg's  maternal  grandmother  had  been  a 
Swede,  a  creature  of  toughness  and  skill  on  skis,  a 
young  woman,  when  caught  surprisingly  by  the  washed- 
out  English  tourist  Ingeborg's  grandfather,  drenched 
in  frank  reading  and  thinking  and  in  the  smell  of  the 
abounding  forests  and  in  wood  strawberries  and  sour 
cream.  She  had  lived,  up  to  the  day  when  for  some 
quite  undiscoverable  reason  she  allowed  herself  to  be 
married  to  the  narrow  stranger,  in  the  middle  of  big 
beautiful  things — big  stretches  of  water,  big  mountains, 
big  winds,  big  lonelinesses;  and  Ingeborg,  who  had 
never  been  out  of  England  and  had  spent  years  in  the 
soft  and  soppy  west,  seeing  the  picture  of  the  great  lake 
and  the  great  sky  in  the  window  in  Regent  Street,  felt 
a  quick  grip  on  her  heart. 

It  was  the  fingers  of  her  grandmother. 

She  stood  staring  at  the  picture,  half-remembering, 
trying  hard  to  remember  quite,  something  beautiful 
and  elusive  and  remote  that  once  she  had  known — oh, 
that  once  she  had  known — but  that  she  kept  on  some- 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  9 

how  forgetting.  The  urgencies  of  daily  life  in  episcopal 
surroundings,  the  breathless  pursuit  of  her  duties,  the 
effort  all  day  long  to  catch  them  up  and  be  even  with 
them,  the  Bishop's  buttons,  the  Bishop's  speeches,  the 
Bishop's  departures  by  trains,  his  all-pervadingness 
when  at  home,  his  all-engulfing  mass  of  correspondence 
when  away — "She  is  my  Right  Hand,"  he  would  say 
in  stately  praise- — the  Redchester  tea-parties  to  which 
her  mother  couldn't  go  because  of  the  sofa,  the  county 
garden-parties  to  which  Judith  had  to  be  taken,  the 
callers,  the  bazaars,  the  cathedral  services,  the  hurry, 
the  noise — life  at  home  seemed  the  noisiest  thing — these 
had  smothered  and  hidden,  beaten  down,  put  out  and 
silenced  that  highly  important  and  unrecognized  part 
of  her,  her  little  bit  of  lurking  grandmother.  Now, 
however,  this  tough  but  impulsive  lady  rose  within  her 
in  all  her  might.  Her  granddaughter  was  in  exactly  the 
right  state  for  being  influenced.  She  was  standing  there 
staring,  longing,  seething  with  Scandinavia,  and  pres- 
ently arguing. 

Why  shouldn't  she?  The  Bishop,  as  she  had  re- 
marked with  wonder  earlier  in  the  afternoon,  seemed 
to  have  faded  quite  pallid  that  long  way  off.  And  ar- 
rangements had  been  made.  He  had  engaged  an  extra 
secretary;  his  chaplain  had  been  warned;  Judith  was 
going  perhaps  to  do  something;  her  mother  would  stay 
safely  on  the  sofa.  They  did  not  expect  her  back  for 
at  least  a  week,  and  not  for  as  much  longer  as  her  tooth 
might  ache.  If  her  tooth  were  still  in  her  mouth  it  would 
be  aching.  If  the  dentist  had  decided  to  stop  it,  it  would 
have  been  a  fortnight  before  such  a  dreadful  ache  as 
that  could  be  suppressed,  she  was  sure  it  would.  And 
the  ten  pounds  her  father  had  given  her  for  taxis  and 
tips  and  other  odds  and  ends,  spread  over  a  fortnight 


10  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

what  would  have  been  left  of  it  anyhow?  Besides,  he 
had  said — and  indeed  the  Bishop,  desirous  of  taking  no 
jot  from  his  generosity  in  the  whole  annoying  business, 
had  said  it,  and  said  it  with  the  strong  flavour  of  Scrip- 
ture which  hung  about  even  his  mufti  utterances — that 
she  might  keep  any  fragments  of  it  that  remained  that 
nothing  be  lost. 

"Your  father  is  very  good  to  you,"  said  her  mother, 
in  whose  prostrate  presence  the  gift  had  been  made. 
— "But  bishops,"  flashed  across  Ingeborg's  undisci- 
plined and  jerky  mind,  "have  to  be  good"— (she  caught 
the  flash,  however,  and  choked  it  out  before  it  had  got 
half-way) — "you'll  be  able  to  get  yourself  a  spring  hat." 

"Yes,  mother,"  said  Ingeborg,  holding  her  face. 

"And  I  should  think  a  blouse  as  well,"  said  her 
mother  thoughtfully. 

"Yes,  mother." 

:'My  dear,  remember  I  require  Ingeborg  here,"  said 
the  Bishop,  uneasy  at  this  vision  of  an  indispensable 
daughter  delayed  by  blouses.  "You  will  not,  of  course, 
forget  that,  Ingeborg." 

"No,  father." 

And  here  she  was  forgetting  it.  Here  she  was  in  front 
of  a  common  poster  forgetting  it.  What  the  Ritz  and 
the  Thackeray  Hotel  with  all  their  attractions  had  not 
been  able  to  do,  that  crude  picture  did.  She  forgot  the 
Bishop — or  rather  he  seemed  at  that  distance  such  a 
little  thing,  such  a  little  bit  of  a  thing,  a  tiny  little  black 
figure  with  a  dab  of  white  on  its  top,  compared  to  this 
vision  of  splendid  earth  and  heaven,  that  she  wilfully 
would  not  remember  him.  She  forgot  her  accumulat- 
ing work.  She  forgot  that  her  movements  had  all  first 
to  be  sanctioned.  A  whirl  of  Scandinavianism,  of  violent 
longing  for  freedom  and  adventure,  seemed  to  catch  her 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  11 

and  lift  her  out  of  the  street  and  fling  her  into  a  place  of 
maps  and  time-tables  and  helpful  young  men  framed 
in  mahogany. 

"When — when "    she    stammered    breathlessly, 

pointing  to  a  duplicate  of  the  same  poster  hanging  in- 
side, "when  does  the  next  trip  start?" 

"To-morrow,  madam,"  said  the  young  man  her 
question  had  tumbled  on. 

A  solemnity  fell  upon  her.  She  felt  it  was  Providence. 
She  ceased  to  argue.  She  didn't  even  try  to  struggle. 
"I'm  going,"  she  announced. 

And  her  ten  pounds  became  two  pounds  thirteen, 
and  she  walked  away  conscious  of  nothing  except  that 
the  very  next  day  she  would  be  off. 


CHAPTER  II 

SHE  was  collected  by  the  official  leader  of  this  par- 
ticular Dent's  Excursion  at  Charing  Cross  the 
next  morning  and  swept  into  a  second-class 
carriage  with  nine  other  excursionists,  and  next  door 
there  were  more — she  counted  eighteen  of  them  at  one 
time  crowding  round  the  leader  asking  him  questions 
— and  besides  these  there  was  a  crowd  of  ordinary 
passengers  bustling  about  with  holiday  expressions, 
and  several  runaway  couples,  and  every  single  person 
seemed  like  herself  eager  to  be  off. 

The  runaway  couples,  from  the  ravaged  expressions 
on  their  faces,  were  being  torn  by  doubts,  perhaps  al- 
ready by  repentances;  but  Ingeborg,  though  she  was 
deceiving  her  father  who,  being  a  bishop,  should  have 
been  peculiarly  inviolate,  and  her  mother  who,  being 
sofa-ridden,  should  have  appealed  to  her  better  nature, 
and  her  sister  who,  being  exquisite,  should  have  been 
guarded  from  any  shadow  that  might  dim  her  beauty, 
had  none.  She  had  been  frightened  that  morning  while 
she  was  packing  and  getting  herself  out  of  her  aunt's 
house.  The  immense  conviction  of  the  servants  that  she 
was  going  home  cowed  her.  And  she  had  had  to  say 
little  things — Paddington,  for  instance,  to  the  taxi 
driver  when  she  knew  she  meant  Charing  Cross,  and 
had  blushed  when  she  changed  it  through  the  window. 
But  here  she  was,  and  there  was  a  crowd  of  people  doing 
exactly  the  same  thing  whose  secure  jollity,  except  in 

12 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  13 

the  case  of  those  odd,  sad  couples,  was  contagious,  and 
she  felt  both  safe  and  as  though  she  were  the  most  nor- 
mal creature  in  the  world. 

"What/w/i,"  she  thought,  her  blood  dancing  as  she 
watched  the  swarming,  surging  platform,  "what  fun." 

Often  had  she  been  at  the  Redchester  station  in  at- 
tendance on  her  departing  father,  but  what  a  getting 
off  was  that  compared  with  this  hilarity.  There  was 
bustle,  of  course,  because  trains  won't  wait  and  people 
won't  get  out  of  the  way,  but  the  Bishop's  bustlings, 
particularly  when  their  end  was  confirmations,  were 
conducted  with  a  kind  of  frozen  offendedness;  there 
was  no  life  in  him,  she  thought,  remembering  them,  he 
didn't  let  himself  go.  On  the  other  hand,  she  reflected, 
careful  to  be  fair,  you  couldn't  snatch  illicitly  at  things 
like  confirmations  in  the  way  you  could  at  a  Dent's 
Tour  and  devour  them  in  secret  with  a  fearful  hidden 
joy.  She  felt  like  a  bulb  must  feel,  she  thought,  at  the 
supreme  moment  when  it  has  nosed  its  little  spear 
successfully  up  through  the  mould  it  has  endured  all 
the  winter  and  gets  it  suddenly  out  into  the  light  and 
splendour  of  the  world.  The  freedom  of  it!  The  joy 
of  getting  clear! 

The  excursionists  in  the  carriage  struggled  to  reach 
the  window  across  her  feet  and  say  things  to  their  friends 
outside.  They  all  talked  at  once,  and  the  carriage  was 
full  of  sound  and  gesticulations.  The  friends  on  the 
platform  could  not  hear,  but  they  nodded  and  smiled 
sympathetically  and  shouted  at  intervals  that  it  was 
going  to  be  a  good  crossing.  Everybody  was  being  seen 
off  except  herself  and  the  runaway  couples;  indeed, 
you  could  know  which  those  were  by  the  gaps  along 
the  platform.  She  sat  well  back  in  her  place,  anxious 
to  make  herself  as  convenient  as  possible  and  to  get 


14  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

her  feet  tucked  out  of  the  way,  a  typical  daughter  of 
provincial  England  and  a  careful  home  and  the  more 
expensive  clergy,  well-dressed,  inconspicuous,  and  grey. 
Her  soft  mouse-colour  hat,  as  the  fashion  that  spring 
still  went  on  decreeing  in  the  west,  came  down  well  over 
her  eyes  and  ears,  and  little  rings  of  cheerful  hair  of  a 
Scandinavian  colouring  wantoned  beneath  it.  Her 
small  face  was  swallowed  up  in  the  shadow  of  the  hat; 
you  saw  a  liberal  mouth  with  happy  corners,  and  the 
nostrils  of  a  selective  nose,  and  there  was  an  impression 
of  freckles,  and  of  a  very  fair  sunny  sort  of  skin. 

The  square  German  gentleman  opposite  her,  know- 
ing nobody  in  London  and  therefore  being,  but  for  a 
different  and  honourable  reason,  in  her  position  of  not 
having  any  one  to  see  him  off,  filled  up  the  time  by 
staring.  Entirely  unconscious  that  it  might  be  em- 
barrassing he  sat  and  stared.  With  the  utmost  single- 
ness of  mind  he  wished  to  see  the  rest  of  her,  when  he 
would  be  able  to  determine  whether  she  were  pretty  or 
not. 

Ingeborg,  absorbed  by  the  wild  excitement  on  the 
platform,  had  not  noticed  him;  but  immediately  the 
train  started  and  the  other  passengers  had  sorted  them- 
selves into  their  seats  and  were  beginning  the  furtive 
watchfulness  of  one  another  that  was  presently  to  re- 
solve itself  into  acquaintanceship,  she  knew  there  was 
something  large  and  steady  opposite  that  was  concen- 
trated upon  herself. 

She  looked  up  quickly  to  see  what  it  was,  and  for  a 
moment  her  polite  intelligent  eyes  returned  his  stare. 
He  decided  that  she  had  missed  being  pretty,  and  with 
a  faint  regret  wondered  what  God  was  about. 

"Fattened  up — yes,  possibly,"  he  thought.  "Fat- 
tened up — yes,  perhaps." 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  15 

And  he  went  on  staring  because  she  happened  to 
be  exactly  opposite,  and  there  was  nothing  else  except 
tunnels  to  look  at. 

The  other  excursionists  were  all  in  pairs;  they 
thought  Ingeborg  was,  too,  and  put  her  down  at  first 
as  the  German  gentleman's  wife  because  he  did  not 
speak  to  her.  There  were  two  couples  of  young  women, 
one  of  ladies  of  a  riper  age,  and  one  of  earnest  young 
men  who  were  mentioning  Balzac  to  each  other  almost 
before  they  had  got  to  New  Cross.  Indeed,  a  surprising 
atmosphere  of  culture  pervaded  the  compartment. 
Ingeborg  was  astonished.  Except  the  riper  ladies, 
who  persisted  in  talking  about  Shoolbred,  they  were 
all  presently  saying  educated  things.  Balzac,  Blake, 
Bernard  Shaw,  and  Mrs.  Florence  Barclay  were  bandied 
backwards  and  forwards  across  the  carriage  as  lightly 
and  familiarly  as  though  they  had  been  balls.  In  the  far 
corner  Browning  was  being  compared  with  Tennyson; 
in  the  middle,  Dickens  with  Thackeray.  The  two  elder 
ladies,  who  kept  to  Shoolbred,  formed  a  sort  of  dam  be- 
tween these  educated  overflowings  and  the  silent  back- 
water in  which  Ingeborg  and  the  German  gentleman 
sat  becalmed.  Presently,  owing  to  a  politeness  that 
could  not  allow  even  an  outlying  portion  of  any  one 
else's  clothing  or  belongings  to  be  brushed  against 
without  "Excuse  me"  having  been  said  and  "Don't 
mention  it"  having  been  answered,  acquaintanceships 
were  made;  chocolates  were  offered;  they  introduced 
each  other  to  each  other;  for  a  brief  space  the  young 
men's  caps  were  hardly  on  their  heads,  and  the  air  was 
murmurous  with  gratified  noises.  But  the  two  riper 
ladies,  passionately  preoccupied  by  Shoolbred,  con- 
tinued to  dam  up  Ingeborg  and  her  opposite  neighbour 
into  a  stagnant  and  unfruitful  isolation. 


16  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

She  tried  to  peep  round  the  lady  next  to  her,  who 
jutted  out  like  a  mountain  with  mighty  boulders  on  it, 
so  as  to  see  the  three  people  hidden  in  the  valley  beyond. 
Glimpses  of  their  knees  revealed  that  they  were  just 
like  the  ones  on  the  seat  opposite.  They  were  neat 
knees,  a  little  threadbare;  not  with  the  delicate  thread- 
bareness  of  her  own  home  in  the  palace  at  Redchester, 
where  splendours  of  carved  stone  and  black  oak  and 
ancient  glass  were  kept  from  flaunting  their  pricelessness 
too  obviously  in  the  faces  of  the  local  supporters  of 
Disestablishment  by  a  Christian  leanness  in  the  matter 
of  carpets,  but  knees  that  were  inexpensive  because  they 
had  to  be.  Who  were  these  girls  and  young  men,  and 
the  two  abundant  ladies,  and  the  man  with  the  vast  thick 
head  and  unalterable  stare?  All  people  who  did  things, 
she  was  certain.  Not  just  anything,  like  herself,  but 
regular  things  that  began  and  stopped  at  fixed  times, 
that  were  paid  for.  That  was  why  they  were  able  to  do 
frankly  and  honourably  what  she  was  snatching  at 
furtively  in  a  corner.  For  a  brief  astonishing  instant 
she  was  aware  she  liked  the  corner  way  best.  Staggered 
at  this,  for  she  could  in  no  way  reconcile  it  with  the 
Bishop,  the  cathedral,  the  home,  nor  with  any  of  her 
thoughts  down  there  while  enfolded  in  these  three  ab- 
sorbing influences,  she  tried  to  follow  her  father's  oft- 
repeated  advice  and  look  into  herself.  But  itdid  nothelp 
much.  She  saw,  indeed,  that  she  was  doing  an  out- 
rageous thing,  but  then  she  was  very  happy — happier 
than  she  had  ever  been  in  Redchester,  plied  with  legiti- 
mate episcopal  joys.  There  was  a  keenness  about  this 
joy,  the  salt  freshness  of  something  jolly  and  indefensi- 
ble done  in  secret.  She  did  look  at  penitence  sideways 
for  an  instant,  but  almost  at  once  decided  that  it  was  a 
thing  that  comes  afterwards.    First  you  do  your  thing. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  17 

You  must  of  course  do  your  thing,  or  there  couldn't  be 
any  penitence. 

She  sat  up  very  straight,  her  face  lit  with  these 
thoughts  that  both  amused  and  frightened  her,  her  lips 
slightly  parted,  her  eyes  radiant,  ready  for  anything  life 
had  to  offer. 

"A  little  fattened  up,"  thought  the  German  gentle- 
man;  "a  little  even  would  probably  suffice." 

There  was  to  be  a  night  in  Paris — no  time  to  see  it, 
but  you  can't  have  everything,  and  Paris  is  Paris — and 
next  morning  into  the  train  again,  and  down,  down,  all 
down  the  slope  of  the  map  of  France  to  Bale,  the  Gate 
of  Beauty,  surely  of  heavenly  beauty,  and  then  you  got 
there,  and  there  were  five  whole  days  of  wonder,  and 
then    .    .    . 

Her  thoughts  hesitated.  Why  then  she  supposed, 
making  an  effort,  you  began  to  come  back.  And 
then     . 

But  here  she  thought  it  wisest  not  to  go  on  thinking. 

"Excuse  me,  but  do  you  mind  having  that  window 
up?"  asked  the  lady  on  her  right. 

"Oh,  no,"  said  Ingeborg,  darting  at  the  strap  with 
the  readiness  to  help  and  obey  she  had  been  so  carefully 
practised  in. 

It  was  stiff,  and  she  fumbled  at  it,  wondering  a  little 
why  the  man  opposite  just  watched. 

When  she  had  got  it  up  he  undid  the  woollen  scarf 
round  his  neck  and  unbuttoned  the  top  button  of  his 
overcoat. 

"At  last,"  he  said  in  a  voice  of  relief,  heaving  an 
enormous  sigh. 

He  looked  at  her  and  smiled. 

Instantly  she  smiled  back.  Any  shreds  of  selfcon- 
sciousness  she  may  have  had  clinging  to  her  in  her  earlier 


18  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

days  had  been  finally  scraped  off  when  Judith,  that 
amazing  piece  of  loveliness,  came  out. 

"Were  you  cold?"  she  asked,  with  the  friendly  inter- 
est of  a  boy. 

"Naturally.  When  windows  are  open  one  is  always 
cold." 

"Oh!"  said  Ingeborg,  who  had  never  thought  of 
that. 

She  perceived  from  his  speech  that  he  was  a  foreigner. 
From  the  turned-down  collar  and  white  tie  beneath  his 
opened  scarf  she  also  was  made  aware  that  he  was  a 
minister  of  religion.  "How  they  pursue  me,"  she 
thought.  Even  here,  even  in  a  railway  carriage  reserved 
for  Dent's  excursionists  only,  one  of  them  had  filtered 
through.  She  also  saw  that  he  was  of  a  drab  com- 
plexion, and  that  his  hair,  drab,  too,  and  close-cropped 
and  thick,  seemed  to  be  made  of  beaver. 

"But  that's  what  windows  are  /or,"  she  said,  after 
reflecting  on  it. 

"No." 

The  two  large  ladies  let  Shoolbred  pause  while  they 
looked  at  each  other. 

They  considered  Ingeborg's  behaviour  forward.  She 
ought  not  to  have  spoken  first.  Impossible  on  a  Dent's 
Tour  not  to  make  friends — indeed  the  social  side  of  these 
excursions  is  the  most  important — but  there  are  rules. 
The  other  end  of  the  carriage  had  observed  the  rules. 
The  two  ladies  hoped  they  had  not  joined  anything  not 
quite  high-toned.  The  other  end  had  carried  out  the 
rules  with  rigid  savoir-vivre;  had  accidentally  touched 
and  trodden  on;  had  apologised;  had  had  its  apolo- 
gies accepted;  had  introduced  and  been  introduced; 
and  so  had  cleared  the  way  to  chocolates. 

"No?"  repeated  Ingeborg  inquiringly. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  19 

"The  aperture  was  there  first,"  said  the  German 
gentleman. 

"Of  course,"  said  Ingeborg,  seeing  he  waited  for  her 
to  admit  it. 

"And  in  the  fulness  of  the  ages  came  man,  and 
mechanically  shut  it." 

"Yes,"  said  Ingeborg.     "But " 

"Consequently,  the  function  of  windows  is  to  shut 
apertures." 

"Yes.    But " 

"And  not  to  open  that  which,  without  them,  was 
open  already." 

"Yes.    But " 

"It  would  be  illogical,"  said  the  German  gentleman 
patiently,  "to  contend  that  their  function  is  to  open 
that  which,  without  them,  was  open  already." 

Reassured  by  the  word  illogical,  which  was  a  nice 
word,  well  known  to  and  quite  within  the  spirit  of  a 
Dent's  Tour,  the  two  ladies  went  on  with  Shoolbred 
where  they  had  left  him  off. 

"The  firstday  I  was  in  England  I  went  about  logically, 
and  shut  each  single  window  in  my  boarding-house. 
I  then  discovered  that  this  embittered  the  atmosphere 
around  me." 

"It  would  thicken  it,"  nodded  Ingeborg,  interested. 

"It  did.  And  my  calling  after  all  being  that  of  peace, 
and  my  visit  so  short,  that  whatever  happened  could 
be  endured,  I  relinquished  logic  and  purchased  in  its 
place  a  woollen  scarf.  This  one.  Then  I  gave  myself 
up  unrestrictedly  to  their  air." 

"And  did  you  like  it?" 

"It  made  me  recollect  with  pleasure  that  I  was  soon 
going  home.  In  East  Prussia  there  are,  on  the  one  hand, 
drawbacks;    but,  on  the  other,   are  double   windows, 


20  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

stoves,  and  a  just  proportion  of  feathers  for  each  man's 
bed.  Till  the  draughts  and  blankets  of  the  boarding- 
house  braced  me  to  enduring  instead  of  enjoying  I  had 
thought  my  holiday  too  short,  and  when  I  remembered 
my  life  and  work  at  home — my  official  life  and  work — 
it  had  been  appearing  to  me  puny." 

"Puny?"  said  Ingeborg,  her  eyes  on  his  white  tie. 

"Puny.  The  draughts  and  blankets  of  the  boarding- 
house  cured  me.  I  am  returning  gladly.  My  life  there, 
I  say  to  myself,  may  be  puny  but  it  is  warm.  So,"  he 
added,  smiling,  "a  man  learns  content." 

"Taught  by  draughts  and  blankets?" 

"Taught  by  going  away." 

"Oh?"  said  Ingeborg.  Had  Providence  then  only 
led  her  to  that  poster  in  order  that  she  should  learn 
content?  Were  Dent's  Tours  really  run,  educationally, 
by  Providence? 

"But "  she  began,  and  then  stopped. 

"It  is  necessary  to  go  away  in  order  to  come  back," 
said  the  German  gentleman,  again  with  patience. 

"Yes.    Of  course.    But " 

"The  chief  use  of  a  holiday  is  to  make  one  hungry  to 
have  finished  with  it." 

"  Oh  no,"  she  protested,  the  joy  of  holiday  in  her  voice. 

"Ah.    You  are  at  the  beginning." 

"The  very  beginning." 

"Yet  at  the  end  you,  too,  will  return  home  recon- 
ciled." 

She  looked  at  him  and  shook  her  head. 

"I  don't  think   reconciled   is  quite  the "     She 

paused,  thinking.  "To  what?"  she  went  on.  'To 
puniness,  too?" 

The  two  ladies  faltered  in  their  conversation,  and 
glanced  at  Ingeborg,  and  then  at  each  other. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  21 

"Perhaps  not  to  puniness.     You  are  not  a  pastor." 

There  was  a  distinct  holding  of  the  breath  of  the  two 
ladies.  The  German  gentleman's  slow  speech  fell  very 
clearly  on  their  sudden  silence. 

"No,"  said   Ingeborg.     "But  what  has  that " 

"I  am.    And  it  is  a  puny  life." 

Ingeborg  felt  a  slight  curdling.  She  thought  of  her 
father — also,  if  you  come  to  that,  a  pastor.  She  was 
sure  there  was  nothing  in  anything  he  ever  did  that 
would  strike  him  as  puny.  His  life  was  magnificent 
and  important,  filled  to  bursting  point  with  a  splendid 
usefulness  and  with  a  tendency  to  fill  the  lives  of  every 
one  who  came  within  his  reach  to  their  several  bursting 
points,  too.  But  he,  of  course,  was  a  prince  of  the  Church. 
Still, he  had  gone  through  the  Church's  stages,  beginning 
humbly;  yet  she  doubted  whether  at  any  moment  of  his 
career  he  had  looked  at  it  and  thought  it  puny.  And 
was  it  not  indeed  the  highest  career  of  all?  However 
breathless  and  hurried  it  made  one's  female  relations 
in  its  upper  reaches,  and  drudging  in  its  lower,  the  very 
highest? 

But  though  she  was  curdled  she  was  interested. 

"It  might  not  be  amiss,"  continued  the  pastor,  look- 
ing out  of  the  window  at  some  well-farmed  land  they 
were  passing,  "if  it  were  not  for  the  Sundays." 

Again  she  was  curdled. 

"But " 

"They  spoil  it." 

She  was  silent;  and  the  silence  of  the  two  ladies  ap- 
peared to  acquire  a  frost. 

"It  is  the  fatal  habit  of  Sundays,"  he  went  on,  follow- 
ing the  disappearing  land  with  his  eyes,  "to  recur." 

He  paused,  as  if  waiting  for  her  to  agree. 

She  had  to,  because  it  was  a  truth  one  could  not  get 


22  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

away  from.  "Yes,"  she  said,  reluctantly.  "Of  course. 
It's  their  nature."  Then  a  wave  of  memories  suddenly 
broke  over  her,  and  she  added  warmly  "Oh  don't  they ! " 

The  frost  of  the  ladies  seemed  to  settle  down.  It 
grew  heavy. 

"They  interrupt  one's  work,"  he  said. 

"But  they  are  your  work,"  she  said,  puzzled. 

"No." 

She  stared.     "But,"  she  began,  "a  pastor " 

"A  pastor  is  also  a  man." 

"Yes,"  said  Ingeborg,  "but " 

"You  have  no  doubt  observed  that  he  is,  invariably, 
also  a  man." 

"Yes,"  said  Ingeborg,  "but " 

"And  a  man  of  intelligence — I  am  a  man  of  intelli- 
gence— cannot  fill  up  his  life  with  the  meagre  materials 
offered  by  the  practice  of  the  tenets  of  the  Lutheran 
Church." 

"Oh — the  Lutheran  Church,"  said  Ingeborg,  catch- 
ing at  a  straw. 

"Any  church." 

She  was  silent.  She  felt  how  immensely  her  father 
would  not  have  liked  it.  She  felt  it  was  wicked  to  sit 
there  and  listen.  She  also  felt,  strange  and  dreadful  to 
observe,  refreshed. 

"Then,"  she  began,  knitting  her  brows,  for  really 
this  at  its  best  was  bad  taste,  and  bad  taste,  she  had 
always  been  taught,  was  the  very  worst — oh,  but  how 
nice  it  was,  a  little  bit  of  it,  after  the  swamps  of  good 
taste  one  waded  about  in  in  cathedral  cities!  She 
knitted  her  brows,  aghast  at  her  thoughts.  'Then 
what,"  she  asked,  "do  you  fill  your  life  up  with?" 

"Manure,"  said  the  German  gentleman. 

The  ladies  leapt  in  their  places. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  23 

"Ma "  began  Ingeborg;  then  stopped. 

"I  am  engaged  in  endeavouring  to  teach  the  peasants 
of  my  parish  how  best  to  farm  their  poor  pieces  of  land." 

"Oh,  really,"  said  Ingeborg,  politely. 

"I  do  it  by  example.  They  do  not  attend  to  words. 
I  have  bought  a  few  acres  and  experiment  before  their 
eyes.  Our  soil  is  the  worst  in  Germany.  It  is  incon- 
ceivably thankless.     And  the  peasants  resemble  it." 

"Oh,  really,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"The  result  of  the  combination  is  poverty." 

"So  then,  I  suppose,"  said  Ingeborg,  with  memories 
of  the  Bishop's  methods,  "you  preach  patience." 

"Patience!     I  preach  manure." 

Again  at  the  dreadful  word  the  ladies  leapt. 

"It  is,"  he  said  solemnly,  his  eyes  glistening  with  en- 
thusiasm, "the  foundation  of  a  nation's  greatness." 

"I  hadn't  thought  of  it  like  that,"  said  Ingeborg, 
seeing  that  he  waited. 

"But  on  what  then  does  a  State  depend  in  the  last 
resort?" 

She  was  afraid  to  say,  for  there  seemed  to  be  so 
many  possible  answers. 

"Naturally  on  its  agriculture,"  said  the  pastor,  with 
the  slight  irritation  of  one  obliged  to  linger  over  the 
obvious. 

"Of  course,"  said  the  pliable  Ingeborg,  trained  in 
acquiescence. 

"And  on  what  does  agriculture  depend  in  the  last 
resort?" 

Brilliantly  she  hazarded  "Manure." 

For  the  third  time  the  ladies  leapt,  and  the  one 
next  to  her  drew  away  her  dress. 

He  showed  his  appreciation  of  her  intelligence  by 
nodding  slowly. 


U  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"A  nation  must  be  fed,"  he  said,  "and  empty  fields 
will  feed  no  one." 

"Of  course  not,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"So  that  it  is  the  chief  element  in  all  progress;  for 
the  root  of  progress  flourishes  only  in  a  filled  stomach." 

The  ladies  began  to  fan  themselves  violently,  ner- 
vously, one  with  The  Daily  Mirror  the  other  with 
Answers. 

"Of  course,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"First,"  said  the  German  gentleman,  "you  fill  your 
stomach " 

The  lady  next  to  Ingeborg  made  a  sudden  lunge 
across  her  at  the  strap. 

"Excuse  me,  but  do  you  mind  putting  that  window 
down?'"  she  said  in  a  sort  of  burst. 

The  German  gentleman,  stemmed  in  his  speech, 
used  the  interval  while  Ingeborg  opened  the  window  in 
buttoning  up  his  overcoat  again  with  care  and  patience 
and  readjusting  his  muffler. 

When  he  had  attended  to  these  things  he  resumed 
his  enthusiasm;  he  seemed  to  switch  it  on  again. 

"The  infinite  combinations  of  it!"  he  exclaimed. 
"Its  infinite  varieties!  Kali,  Kainit,  Chilisaltpetre, 
Superphosphates" — he  rolled  out  the  words  as  though 
they  were  the  verse  of  a  psalm.  'When  I  shut  the 
door  on  myself  in  the  little  laboratory  I  have  con- 
structed I  shut  in  with  me  all  life,  all  science,  every 
possibility.  I  analyse,  I  synthesize,  I  separate,  re- 
duce, combine.  I  touch  the  stars.  I  stir  the  depths. 
The  daily  world  is  forgotten.  I  forget,  indeed,  every- 
thing, except  my  research.  And  invariably  at  the 
most  profound,  the  most  exalted  moments  some  one 
knocks  and  tells  me  it  is  Sunday  again,  and  will  I  come 
out  and  preach." 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  25 

He  looked  at  her  indignantly,  demanding  sympathy. 
"Preach!"  he  repeated. 

"Then  why,"  she  asked,  with  the  courage  of  curi- 
osity, "are  you  a  pastor? " 

"Because  my  father  made  me  one." 

"But  why  are  you  still  one?" 

"Because  a  man  must  live." 

"He  oughtn't  to  want  to,"  said  Ingeborg  with  a 
faint  flush,  for  she  had  been  carefully  trained  to  shy- 
ness when  it  came  to  pronouncing  opinions — the  Bishop 
called  it  being  womanly — "he  oughtn't  to  want  to  at 
the  cost  of  his  convictions." 

'Nevertheless,"  said  the  pastor,  "he  does." 

"Yes,"  said  Ingeborg,  obliged  to  admit  it;  even  at 
Redchester  cases  were  not  unknown.  "He  does,"  she 
said,  nodding.  "Of  course  he  does."  And  unable  not 
to  be  at  least  as  honest  as  the  pastor  she  added :  "And 
so  does  a  woman." 

"Naturally,"  said  the  pastor. 

She  looked  at  him  a  moment,  and  then  said  im- 
pulsively, pulling  herself  a  little  forward  towards  him 
by  the  window  strap — 

'  This  woman  does.     She's  doing  it  now." 

The  two  ladies  exchanged  glances  and  fluttered 
their  fans  faster. 

"Which  woman?"  inquired  the  pastor,  whose  mas- 
tery of  English,  though  ripe,  was  not  nimble. 

'This  one,"  said  Ingeborg,  pointing  at  herself. 
"Me.  I'm  living  at  this  very  moment— I'm  whirling 
along  in  this  train — I'm  running  away  for  this  holiday 
entirely  at  the  cost  of  my  convictions." 


CHAPTER  III 

AFTER  this  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that  Dent's 
Tour  should  look  favourably  on  either  Ingeborg 
or  the  German  gentleman.  Running  away? 
And  something  happened  at  Dover  that  clinched  it  in 
its  coldness. 

The  train  had  slowed  down,  and  the  excursionists 
had  become  busy  and  were  all  standing  up  expectant 
and  swaying  with  their  bags  and  umbrellas  ready  in 
their  hands,  except  Ingeborg  and  the  pastor.  The 
train  stopped,  and  still  the  two  at  the  door  did  not 
move.  They  were  so  much  interested  in  what  they 
were  saying  that  they  went  on  sitting  there,  barbar- 
ously corking  up  the  congested  queue  inside  the  car- 
riage while  streams  of  properly  liberated  passengers 
poured  past  the  window  on  their  way  to  the  best  places 
on  the  boat. 

The  queue  heaved  and  waited,  holding  on  to  its 
good  manners  till  the  last  possible  moment,  quite  anx- 
ious, with  the  exception  of  the  two  ladies  who  were 
driven  to  the  very  verge  of  naturalness  by  the  things 
they  had  had  to  listen  to,  lest  it  should  be  forced 
to  show  what  it  was  feeling  (for  what  one  is  feeling, 
Dent's  excursionists  had  surprisingly  discovered,  is 
always  somehow  something  rude),  and  seconds  passed 
and  still  it  was  kept  there  heaving. 

Then  the  pastor,  gazing  with  a  large  unhurried  in- 
terest at  the  people  pushing  by   the  window,  people 

«6 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  27 

disfigured  by  haste  and  the  greed  for  the  best  places 
on  the  boat,  said  in  a  voice  of  mild  but  penetrating 
complaint — it  almost  seemed  as  if  in  that  congested 
moment  he  saw  only  leisure  for  musing  aloud — "But 
why  does  the  good  God  make  so  many  ugly  old  wo- 
men: 

It  was  when  he  said  this  that  the  mountainous  lady 
at  the  head  of  the  queue  flung  behaviour  to  the  winds 
and  let  herself  go  uncontrolledly.  '  Will  you  allow  me 
to  pass?"  she  cried.  Nor  did  she  give  him  another  in- 
stant's grace,  but  pressed  between  his  and  Ingeborg's 
knees,  followed  torrentially  by  the  released  remainder. 

'To  keep  us  all  waiting  there  just  while  he  blas- 
phemed!" she  panted  on  the  platform  to  her  friend. 

And  during  the  rest  of  the  time  the  party  was  to- 
gether it  retired,  led  by  these  two  ladies,  into  an  icy 
exclusiveness,  outside  which  and  left  together  all  day 
long  Ingeborg  and  the  pastor  could  not  but  make 
friends. 

They  did.  They  talked  and  they  walked,  they 
climbed  and  they  sight-saw.  They  did  every  thing- 
Dent  had  arranged,  going  with  him  but  not  of  him, 
always,  as  it  were,  bringing  up  his  rear.  Equally  care- 
ful, being  equally  poor,  they  avoided  the  extras  which 
seemed  to  lurk  beckoning  at  every  corner  of  the  day. 
Their  frugality  was  flagrant,  and  shocked  the  other 
excursionists  even  more  than  the  dreadful  things  they 
said.  "Such  bad  taste,"  the  Tour  declared  when,  on 
the  third  day,  after  having  provoked  criticism  by  their 
negative  attitude  towards  afternoon  tea  and  the  pur- 
chase of  picture  postcards,  they  would  not  lighten  its 
several  burdens  by  taking  their  share  of  an  unincluded 
outing  in  flys  along  the  lake.  Even  Mr.  Ascough, 
Dent's   distracted   representative,    thought   them    un- 


28  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

desirable,  and  especially  could  make  nothing  of  Inge- 
borg,  except  that  somehow  she  was  not  Dent's  sort. 
And  the  German  gentleman,  though  in  appearance  a 
more  familiar  type,  became  whenever  he  opened  his 
mouth  grossly  unfamiliar.  "Foul-mouthed"  was  the 
expression  the  largest  lady  had  used,  bearing  down  on 
Mr.  Ascough  at  Dover  to  complain,  adding  that  as  she 
had  done  all  her  travelling  for  years  with  and  through 
Dent's  she  felt  justified  in  demanding  that  this  man's 
mouth  should  be  immediately  cleansed. 

"I'm  not  a  toothbrush,  Mrs.  Bawn,"  replied  the 
distracted  Mr.  Ascough,  engaged  at  that  moment  in 
struggling  for  air  and  light  in  the  middle  of  his  cling- 
ing flock. 

"Then  I  shall  write  to  Mr.  Dent  himself,"  said  Mrs. 
Bawn  indignantly. 

And  Mr.  Ascough,  intimidated,  fought  himself  free 
and  followed  her  down  the  platform,  inquiring  dread- 
fully— really  he  seemed  to  be  a  person  of  little  refine- 
ment— whether,  then,  the  German  gentleman's  conver- 
sation had  been  obscene. 

"I  can  get  rid  of  him  if  it's  been  obscene,  you  know," 
said  Mr.  Ascough.     "Was  it? " 

So  that  Mrs.  Bawn,  incensed  and  baffled,  was  obliged 
for  the  dignity  of  her  womanhood  to  say  she  was  glad 
to  have  to  inform  him  she  did  not  know  what  that  word 
meant. 

But  the  pastor — his  name  was  Dremmel,  he  told 
Ingeborg:  Robert  Dremmel — took  everything  that 
happened  with  simplicity.  They  might  shut  him  out, 
and  he  would  never  notice  it;  they  might  turn  their 
backs,  and  he  would  never  know.  Nothing  that  Dent's 
Tour  could  do  in  the  way  of  ostracizing  would  have 
been  able  to  pierce  through  to  his  consciousness.     Hav- 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  29 

ing  decided  that  the  women  of  it  were  plain  and  the 
men  uninteresting  he  thought  of  them  no  more.  With 
his  customary  single-mindedness  he  concentrated  his 
attention  at  first  only  on  Switzerland,  which  was  what 
he  was  paying  to  see,  and  he  found  it  pleasant  that  the 
young  lady  in  grey  should  so  naturally  join  him  in  this 
concentration.  Just  for  a  few  hours  at  the  very  begin- 
ning he  had  thought  her  naturalness,  her  ready  friend- 
liness, a  little  unwomanly.  She  was,  he  thought,  a 
little  too  productive  of  an  impression  that  she  was  a 
kind  of  boy.  She  had  no  selfconsciousness,  which  he 
had  been  taught  by  his  mother  to  confound  with  mod- 
esty, and  no  desire  whatever  apparently  to  please  the 
opposite  sex.  She  went  to  sleep,  for  instance,  towards 
the  end  of  the  long  journey  right  in  front  of  him,  letting 
her  mouth  open  if  it  wanted  to,  and  not  bothering  at 
all  that  he  should  probably  be  looking  at  it. 

Herr  Dremmel,  who  besides  his  agricultural  re- 
searches prided  himself  on  a  liberal  if  intermittent 
interest  in  womanly  charm,  regretted  these  short- 
comings, but  only  for  a  few  hours  at  the  very  beginning. 
By  the  end  of  the  first  day  in  Lucerne  he  was  finding  it 
pleasant  to  pair  off  with  her,  womanly  or  unwomanly. 
He  liked  to  talk  to  her.  He  discovered  he  could  talk 
to  her  as  he  had  been  unable  to  talk  to  the  few  East 
Prussian  young  ladies  he  had  met,  in  spite  of  the  stiff 
intensity  of  their  desire  to  please  him.  He  searched 
about  for  a  reason,  and  concluded  that  it  was  because 
she  was  interested.  Whatever  subject  he  discoursed 
upon  she  came,  so  it  seemed,  running  to  meet  him. 
She  listened  intelligently,  and  with  a  pliability — he  did 
not  then  know  about  the  Bishop's  training — rarely  to 
be  found  in  combination  with  intelligence.  Intelligent 
persons  are  very  apt,  he  remembered,  to  argue  and 


30  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

object.  This  young  lady  was  intelligent  without 
argument,  a  most  comfortable  compound,  and  before 
a  definite  opinion  had  a  graceful  knack  of  doubling  up. 
And  if  her  doublings  up  were  at  all,  as  they  sometimes 
were,  delayed  while  she  put  in  "But — — - '  he  only 
needed  repeat  with  patience  to  bring  out  an  admirable 
submissive  sunniness.  He  could  not  of  course  know  of 
her  severe  training  in  sunniness. 

By  the  end  of  the  second  day  he  had  told  her  more 
about  his  life  and  his  home  and  his  work  and  his  am- 
bitions than  he  had  ever  told  anybody,  and  she  had  told 
him,  only  he  was  unable  to  find  that  so  interesting, 
about  her  life  and  her  home  and  her  work.  She  had 
no  ambitions,  she  explained,  which  he  said  was  well  in 
a  woman.  He  was  hardly  aware  of  the  Bishop,  so 
lightly  did  she  skim  over  him. 

By  the  end  of  the  third  day  he  had  observed  what 
had,  curiously,  escaped  him  before,  that  she  was  pretty. 
Not  of  course  in  the  abundant  East  Prussian  way,  the 
way  of  generous  curves  and  of  what  he  now  began  to 
think  were  after  all  superfluities,  but  with  delicacy  and 
restraint.  He  no  longer  considered  she  would  be  better 
fattened  up.  And  he  was  noticing  her  clothes,  and 
after  a  painstaking  comparing  of  them  with  those  of 
the  other  ladies  applying  to  them  the  adjective  elegant. 

By  the  end  of  the  fourth  he  admitted  to  himself 
that,  very  probably,  he  was  soon  going  to  be  in  love. 

By  the  end  of  the  fifth  he  knew  without  a  doubt 
that  the  thing  had  happened;  the,  to  him  incontro- 
vertible, proof  being  that  on  this  day  Switzerland  sank 
into  being  just  her  background. 

Even  the  Rigi,  he  observed  with  interest,  was  nothing 
to  him.  He  walked  up  it,  he  who  never  walked  up  any- 
thing, because  she  wanted  to.     He  toiled  up  panting, 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  31 

and  forgot  how  warmly  he  was  dissolving  inside  his 
black  clothes  in  the  pleasure  of  watching  her  on  ahead 
glancing  in  and  out  of  the  sunshine  that  fell  clear  and 
white  on  her  as  she  fluttered  above  him  among  the  pine 
trunks.  And  when  he  got  to  the  top,  instead  of  looking 
at  the  view  he  sat  down  in  the  nearest  seat  and  became 
absorbed  in  the  way  the  burning  afternoon  light  seemed 
to  get  caught  in  her  hair  as  she  stood  on  the  edge  of  the 
plateau,  and  made  it  look  the  colour  of  flames. 

This  was  very  interesting.  He  had  never  yet  within 
his  recollection  preferred  hair  to  views.  A  curious  re- 
sult, he  reflected,  of  his  harmless  holiday  enterprise. 

He  had  not  intended  to  marry.  He  was  thirty-five, 
and  dedicated  to  his  work.  He  felt  it  was  a  noble  work, 
this  patient  proving  to  ignorance  and  prejudice  of  what 
could  be  done  with  barrenness  if  only  you  mixed  it 
with  brains.  He  was  fairly  comfortable  in  his  house- 
keeping, having  found  a  woman  who  was  a  widow  ami 
had  therefore  learned  the  great  lesson  that  only  widows 
ever  really  know,  that  a  man  must  be  let  alone.  He  was 
poor,  and  what  he  could  spare  by  rigid  economies  went 
into  the  few  acres  of  sand  that  were  to  be  the  Light  he 
had  to  offer  to  lighten  the  Gentiles.  Every  man,  he 
thought,  should  offer  some  light  to  the  abounding 
Gentiles  before  he  died,  some  light  which,  however 
small,  might  be  kept  so  clear  that  they  could  not  choose 
but  see  it.  A  wife,  he  had  fell  when  considering  the 
question  from  time  to  time,  which  was  each  year  in  the 
early  spring,  would  come  between  him  and  his  light. 
She  would  be  a  shadow:  and  a  voluminous,  all-envelop- 
ing shadow.  His  church  and  the  business  of  preaching 
in  it  were  already  sufficiently  interrupting,  but  they 
were  weekly.  A  wife  would  be  every  day.  He  could 
lock  her  out  of  the  laboratory,  he  would  reflect,  and 


32  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

perhaps  also  out  of  the  sitting-room.  .  .  .  When  he 
became  aware  that  he  was  earnestly  considering  what 
other  rooms  he  could  lock  her  out  of,  and  discovered  that 
he  would  want  to  lock  her  out  of  nearly  all,  he,  as  a  wise 
and  honest  man,  decided  he  had  best  leave  the  much- 
curved  virgins  of  the  neighbourhood  alone. 

The  question  occupied  him  regularly  every  year  in 
the  first  warm  days  of  spring.  For  the  rest  of  the  year 
he  mostly  forgot  it,  absorbed  in  his  work.  And  here 
he  was  on  the  top  of  the  Rigi,  a  cool  place,  almost, 
wintry,  with  it  suddenly  become  so  living  that  compared 
to  it  his  fertilizers  seemed  ridiculous. 

He  examined  this  change  of  attitude  with  care.  He 
was  proud  of  the  way  he  had  fallen  in  love;  he,  a  poor 
man,  doing  it  without  any  knowledge  of  whether  the 
young  lady  had  enough  or  indeed  any  money.  He  sat 
there  and  took  pleasure  in  this  proof  that  though  he 
was  thirty -five  he  could  yet  be  reckless.  He  was  greatly 
pleased  at  finding  himself  so  much  attracted  that  if  it 
should  turn  out  that  she  was  penniless  he  would  still 
manage  to  marry  her,  and  would  make  it  possible  by 
a  series  of  masterly  financial  skirmishings,  the  chief  of 
which  would  be  the  dismissal  of  the  widow  and  the 
replacing  of  her  dinginess,  her  arrested  effect  of  having 
been  nipped  in  the  bud  although  there  was  no  bud,  by 
this  incorporate  sunshine.  The  young  lady's  tact,  of 
which  he  had  seen  several  instances,  would  cause  her  to 
confine  her  sunshine  to  appropriate  moments.  She 
would  not  overflow  it  into  his  working  hours.  Besides, 
marriage  was  a  great  readjuster  of  values.  After  it,  he 
had  not  a  doubt  his  wife  would  fall  quite  naturally  into 
her  place,  which  would,  though  honourable,  be  yet  a 
little  lower  than  the  fertilizers.  If  it  were  not  so,  if 
marriage  did  not  readjust  the  upset  incidental  to  its 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  33 

preliminaries,  what  a  disastrous  thing  falling  in  love 
would  be.  No  serious  man  would  be  able  to  let  himself 
do  it.  But  how  interesting  it  was  the  way  Nature,  that 
old  Hostility,  that  Ancient  Enemy  to  man's  thought, 
did  somehow  manage  to  trip  him  up  sooner  or  later;  and 
how  still  more  interesting  the  ingenuity  with  which  man, 
aware  of  this  trick  and  determined  to  avoid  the  disturb- 
ance of  a  duration  of  affection,  had  invented  marriage. 

He  gazed  very  benevolently  at  the  little  figure  on 
the  edge  of  the  view.  Why  not  marry  her  now,  and 
frugally  convert  the  tail-end  of  Dent's  Excursion  into  a 
honeymoon? 

With  the  large  simplicity  and  obliviousness  to  banns 
and  licences  of  a  man  of  scientific  preoccupations  he  saw 
no  reason  against  this  course.  It  was  obvious.  It  was 
desirable.  It  would  not  only  save  her  going  back  to 
England  first,  it  would  save  the  extra  journey  there  for 
him.  They  would  go  straight  home  to  East  Prussia 
together  at  the  end  of  the  week;  and  as  for  doing  it 
without  her  family's  knowledge,  if  she  could  run  away 
from  them  as  she  had  told  him  she  had  done  just  for 
the  sake  of  a  jaunt,  how  much  more  readily,  with  what 
increase  of  swiftness,  indeed,  would  she  run  for  the  sake 
of  a  husband? 

'Tell  me,  Little  One,"  he  said  when  she  rejoined 
him,  "will  you  marry  me?" 


CHAPTER  IV 

1NGEB0RG  was  astonished. 
She  stared  at  him  speechless.  The  gulf  between 
even  the  warmest  friendliness  and  marriage!  She 
had,  she  knew,  been  daily  increasing  in  warm  friend- 
liness towards  him,  characteristically  expecting  nothing 
back.  That  he,  too,  should  grow  warm  had  not  remotely 
occurred  to  her.  Nobody  had  ever  grown  warm  to  her 
in  that  way.  There  had  always  been  Judith,  that 
miracle  of  beauty,  to  blot  her  into  plainness.  It  is  true 
the  senior  curate  of  the  Redchester  parish  church  had 
said  to  her  once  in  his  exhausted  Oxford  voice,  "You 
know,  I  don't  mind  about  faces — will  you  marry  me?  " 
and  she  had  refused  so  gingerly,  with  such  fear  of  hurt- 
ing his  feelings,  that  for  a  week  he  had  supposed  he  was 
engaged;  but  one  would  not  call  that  warmth.  As  the 
sun  puts  out  the  light  of  a  candle  so  did  the  radiance  of 
Judith  extinguish  Ingeborg.  They  were  so  oddly  alike; 
and  Ingeborg  was  the  pale,  diminished  shadow.  Judith 
was  Ingeborg  grown  tall,  grown  exquisite,  Ingeborg 
wrought  wonderfully  in  ivory  and  gold.  No  man  could 
possibly  fall  in  love  with  Ingeborg  while  there  before  his 
very  eyes  was  apparently  exactly  the  same  girl,  only 
translated  into  loveliness. 

From  the  first  it  had  been  the  most  natural  thing  in 
the  world  to  Ingeborg  to  be  plain  and  passed  over. 
Judith  was  always  beside  her.  Whenever  there  was  a 
pause  in  her  work  for  her  father  it  was  filled  by  the 

34 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  35 

chaperoning  of  Judith.  She  accepted  the  situation 
with  complete  philosophy,  for  nothing  was  quite  so 
evident  as  Judith's  beauty;  and  she  used,  in  corners  at 
parties,  to  keep  herself  awake  by  saying  over  bits  of  the 
Psalms,  on  which,  not  being  allowed  to  read  novels,  her 
literary  enthusiasms  were  concentrated. 

It  was,  then,  really  a  very  astonishing  thing  to  a 
person  practised  in  this  healthy  and  useful  humility  to 
have  some  one  asking  her  to  marry  him.  That  it  should 
be  Herr  Dremmel  seemed  to  her  even  more  astonishing. 
He  didn't  look  like  somebody  one  married.  He  didn't 
even  look  like  somebody  who  wanted  to  marry  one. 
He  sat  there,  his  hands  folded  on  the  knob  of  his  stick, 
gazing  at  her  with  an  entirely  placid  benevolence  and 
asked  her  the  surprising  question  as  though  it  were  a 
way  of  making  conversation.  It  is  true  he  had  not 
called  her  Little  One  before,  but  that,  she  felt  as  she 
stood  before  him  considering  this  thing  that  had  hap- 
pened to  her,  was  pretty  rather  than  impassioned. 

Here  was  an  awkward  and  odd  result  of  her  holiday 
enterprise. 

:'It's — very  unexpected,"  she  said,  lamely. 

'Yes,"  he  agreed.  "It  is  unexpected.  It  has  greatly 
surprised  me." 

"I'm  very  sorry,"  she  said. 

"About  what  are  you  sorry,  Little  One?" 

"I  can't  accept  your — your  oiler." 

"What!    There  is  some  one  else?" 

"Not  that  sort  of  some  one.    But  there's  my  father." 

He  made  a  great  sweep  with  his  arm.  "Fathers," 
he  said;    and  pushed  the  whole  breed  out  of  sight. 

"He's  very  important." 

"Important!    Little  One,  when  will  you  marry  me?" 

"I  can't  leave  him." 


36  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

He  became  patient.  "It  has  been  laid  down  that  a 
woman  shall  leave  father  and  mother  and  any  other 
related  obstacle  she  may  have  the  misfortune  to  be 
hampered  with,  and  cleave  only  to  her  husband." 

"That  was  about  a  man  cleaving  to  his  wife.    There 

wasn't  anything  said  about  a  woman.     Besides ': 

She  stopped.    She  couldn't  tell  him  that  she  didn't  want 
to  cleave. 

He  gazed  at  her  a  moment  in  silence.  He  had  not 
contemplated  a  necessity  for  persuasion. 

"This," he  then  said  with  severity,  "is  prevarication." 

She  sat  down  on  the  grass  and  clasped  her  hands 
round  her  knees  and  looked  up  at  him.  She  had  taken 
off  her  hat  when  first  she  got  to  the  top  to  fan  herself, 
and  had  not  put  it  on  again.  As  she  sat  there  with  her 
back  to  the  glow  of  the  sky,  the  wind  softly  lifted  the 
rings  of  her  hair  and  the  sun  shone  through  them  won- 
derfully. They  seemed  to  flicker  gently  to  and  fro, 
little  tongues  of  fire. 

"Why,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  suddenly  leaning  for- 
ward and  staring,  "you  are  like  a  spirit." 

This  pleased  her.     For  a  moment  her  eyes  danced. 

"Like  a  spirit,"  he  repeated.  "And  here  am  I  talk- 
ing heavily  to  you,  as  though  you  were  an  ordinary 
woman.  Little  One,  how  does  one  trap  a  spirit  into 
marrying?  Tell  me.  For  very  earnestly  do  I  desire 
to  be  shown  the  way." 

"One  doesn't,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"Ah,  do  not  be  difficult.  You  have  been  so  easy,  of 
such  a  comfortable  response  in  all  things  up  to  now." 

"But  this "  began  Ingeborg. 

"Yes.    This,  I  well  know " 

He  was  more  stirred  than  he  had  thought  possible. 
He  was  becoming  almost  eager. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  37 

"But,"  asked  Ingeborg,  exploring  this  new  interest- 
ing situation,  "why  do  you  want  to?" 

"Want  to  marry  you?" 

"Yes." 

"Because,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  immensely  prompt, 
"I  have  had  the  extreme  good  fortune  to  fall  in  love 
with  you." 

Again  she  looked  pleased. 

"And  I  do  not  ask  you,"  he  went  on,  "to  love  me, 
or  whether  you  do  love  me.  It  would  be  presumption 
on  my  part,  and  not,  if  you  did,  very  modest  on  yours. 
That  is  the  difference  between  a  man  and  a  woman. 
He  loves  before  marriage,  and  she  does  not  love  till 
after." 

"Oh?"  said  Ingeborg,  interested.  "And  what  does 
he " 

'The  woman,"  continued  Herr  Dremmel,  "feels 
affection  and  esteem  before  marriage,  and  the  man  feels 
affection  and  esteem  after." 

"Oh,"  said  Ingeborg,  reflecting.  She  began  to  tear 
up  tufts  of  grass.     "It  seems — chilly,"  she  said. 

"Chilly?"  he  echoed. 

He  let  his  stick  drop,  and  got  up  and  came  and  sat 
down,  or  rather  let  himself  down  carefully,  on  the  grass 
beside  her. 

"Chilly?  Do  you  not  know  that  a  decent  chill  is  a 
great  preservative?  Hot  things  decay.  Frozen  things 
do  not  live.  A  just  measure  of  chill  preserves  the  life 
of  the  affections.  It  is,  by  a  very  proper  dispensation 
of  Nature,  provided  before  marriage  by  the  woman, 
and  afterwards  by  the  man.  The  balance  is,  in  this 
way,  nicely  held,  and  peace  and  harmony,  which  flourish 
best  at  a  low  temperature,  prevail." 

She  looked  at  him  and  laughed.     There  was  no  one 


208580 


38  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

in  Redchester,  and  Redchester  was  all  she  knew  of  life, 
in  the  least  like  Herr  Dremmel.  She  stretched  herself 
in  the  roomy  difference,  happy,  free,  at  her  ease. 

"But  I  cannot  believe,"  burst  out  Herr  Dremmel 
with  a  passionate  vigour  that  astonished  him  more 
than  anything  in  his  whole  life  as  he  seized  the  hand 
that  kept  on  tearing  up  grass,  "I  cannot  believe  that 
you  will  not  marry  me.  I  cannot  believe  that  you  will 
refuse  a  good  and  loving  husband,  that  you  will  prefer 
to  remain  with  your  father  and  solidify  into  yet  one 
more  frostbitten  virgin." 

"Into  a  what?"  repeated  Ingeborg,  struck  by  this 
image  of  herself  in  the  future. 

She  began  to  laugh,  then  stopped.  She  stared  at 
him,  her  grey  eyes  very  wide  open.  She  forgot  Herr 
Dremmel,  and  that  he  was  still  clutching  her  hand  and 
all  the  grass  in  it,  while  her  mind  flashed  over  the  years 
that  had  gone  and  the  years  that  were  to  come.  They 
would  be  alike.  They  had  not  been  able  to  frostbite 
her  yet  because  she  had  been  too  young;  but  they 
would  get  her  presently.  Their  daily  repeated  busy 
emptiness,  their  rush  of  barren  duties,  their  meagre 
moments  of  what  when  she  was  younger  used  to  be 
happiness  but  had  lately  only  been  relief,  those  rare 
moments  when  her  father  praised  her,  would  settle 
down  presently  and  freeze  her  dead. 

Her  face  grew  solemn.  "It's  true,"  she  said  slowly. 
"I  shall  be  a  frostbitten  virgin.  I'm  doomed.  My 
father  won't  ever  let  me  marry." 

"You  infinitely  childish  one!"  he  cried,  becoming 
angry.  "When  it  is  well  known  that  all  fathers  wish 
to  get  rid  of  all  daughters." 

"You  don't  understand.  It's  different.  My  father 
— why,"  she  broke  out,  "I  used  to  dose  myself  secretly 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  39 

with  cod  liver  oil  so  as  to  keep  up  to  his  level.  He's 
wonderful.  When  he  praised  me  I  usedn't  to  sleep. 
And  if  he  scolded  me  it  seemed  to  send  me  lame." 

Herr  Dremmel  sawed  her  hand  up  and  down  in  his 
irritation. 

"What  is  this  irrelevant  talk?"  he  said.  "I  offer 
you  marriage,  and  you  respond  with  information  about 
cod  liver  oil.  I  do  not  believe  the  father  obstacle.  I 
do  not  recognize  my  honest  little  friend  of  these  last 
days.  It  is  waste  of  time,  not  being  open.  Would 
you,  then,  if  it  were  not  for  your  father,  marry  me?" 

"But,"  Ingeborg  flashed  round  at  him,  swept  off 
her  feet  as  she  so  often  was  by  an  impulse  of  utter 
truth,  "it's  because  of  him  that  I  would." 

And   the  instant  she  had  said  it  she  was  shocked. 

She  stared  at  Herr  Dremmel  wide-eyed  with  con- 
trition. The  disloyalty  of  it.  The  ugliness  of  telling 
a  stranger — and  a  stranger  with  hair  like  fur — anything 
at  all  about  those  closely  related  persons  she  had  been 
taught  to  describe  to  herself  as  her  dear  ones. 

"Oil,"  she  cried,  dragging  her  hand  away,  "let  my 
hand  go — let  my  hand  go  J" 

She  tried  to  get  on  to  her  feet,  but  with  an  energy 
he  did  not  know  he  possessed  he  pulled  her  down  again. 
He  did  not  recognize  any  of  the  things  he  was  feeling 
and  doing.  The  Dremmel  of  his  real  nature,  of  those 
calm  depths  where  lay  happy  fields  of  future  fertilizers, 
gazed  at  this  inflamed  conduct  going  on  at  the  top  in 
astonishment. 

"No,"  he  said,  with  immense  determination,  "you 
will  sit  here  and  explain  about  your  father." 

"It's  a  dreadful  thing,"  replied  Ingeborg,  suddenly 
discovering  that  of  all  things  she  did  not  like  being 
clutched,  and  looking  straight  into  his  eyes,  her  head 


40  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

a  little  thrown  back,  "that  one  can't  leave  one's  home 
even  for  a  week  without  getting  into  a  scrape." 

"A  scrape!  You  call  it  a  scrape  when  a  good 
man " 

"Here's  a  person  who  goes  away  for  a  little  change 
— privately.  And  before  she  knows  where  she  is  she's 
being  held  down  on  the  top  of  the  Rigi  and  ordered  by 
a  strange  man " 

"By  her  future  husband!"  cried  Herr  Dremmel, 
who  was  finding  the  making  of  offers  more  difficult  than 
he  had  supposed. 

" — by  a  strange  man  to  explain  her  father.  As 
though  anybody  could  ever  explain  their  father.  As 
though  anybody  could  ever  explain  anything" 

"God  in  Heaven,"  cried  Herr  Dremmel,  "do  not 
explain  him  then.    Just  marry  me." 

And  at  this  moment  the  snake-like  procession  of  the 
rest  of  Dent's  Tour,  headed  by  Mr.  Ascough  watch 
in  hand,  emerged  from  the  hotel,  where  it  had  been 
having  tea,  on  to  the  plateau,  wiping  its  mouths  in 
readiness  for  the  sunset. 

With  the  jerk  of  a  thing  that  has  been  stung  it  swerved 
aside  as  it  was  about  almost  to  tread  on  the  two  on  the 
grass. 

Ingeborg  sat  very  stiff  and  straight  and  pretended 
to  be  staring  intently  at  the  view,  forgetting  that  it  was 
behind  her.  She  flushed  when  she  found  there  was  no 
time  to  move  far  enough  from  Herr  Dremmel  for  a 
gap  to  be  visible  between  them. 

"Look  at  those  two  now,"  whispered  the  young  lady 
last  in  the  procession  to  the  young  man  brushing  bread 
and  butter  out  of  his  tie  who  walked  beside  her. 

He  looked,  and  seemed  inclined  to  linger. 
She's  very  pretty,  isn't  she?"  he  said. 


*n 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  41 

"Oh,  do  you  think  so?"  said  his  companion.  "I 
never  think  anybody's  pretty  who  isn't — you  know 
what  I  mean — really  nice,  you  know — lady-like 

And  she  hurried  him  on,  because,  she  said,  if  he  didn't 
hurry  he'd  miss  the  sunset. 


CHAPTER  V 

1NGEB0RG  spent  most  of  the  night  on  a  hard 
chair  at  her  bedroom  window  earnestly  endeav- 
ouring to  think. 

It  was  very  unfortunate,  but  she  found  an  immense 
difficulty  at  all  times  in  thinking.  She  could  keep  her 
father's  affairs  in  the  neatest  order,  but  not  her  own 
thoughts.  There  were  so  many  of  them,  and  they  all 
seemed  to  jump  about  inside  her  and  want  to  get 
thought  first.  They  would  not  go  into  ordered  rows. 
They  had  no  patience.  Often  she  had  suspected  they 
were  not  thoughts  at  all  but  just  feelings,  and  that 
depressed  her,  for  it  made  her  drop,  she  feared,  to  the 
level  of  the  insect  world  and  enter  the  category  of 
things  that  were  not  going  to  be  able  to  get  to  heaven ; 
and  to  a  bishop's  daughter  this  was  disquieting.  Most 
of  her  thoughts  she  was  immediately  sorry  for,  they 
were  so  unlike  anything  she  could,  with  propriety,  say 
out  loud  at  home.  To  Herr  Dremmel  she  had  been 
able  to  say  them  all  as  far  as  speech,  a  limping  vehicle, 
could  be  made  to  go,  and  this  was  another  of  his  re- 
freshing qualities.  She  did  not  of  course  know  of  that 
absorbed  man's  habit  of  listening  to  her  with  only  one 
ear — a  benevolent  ear,  but  only  one — while  with  the 
other,  turned  inwards,  he  listened  to  the  working  out 
in  his  mind  of  problems  in  Chilisaltpetre  and  super- 
phosphates. 

She  sat  staring  out  of  the  window  at  the  stars  and 

42 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  43 

chimney-pots,  her  hands  held  tightly  in  her  lap,  and 
told  herself  that  the  moment  had  come  for  clear,  con- 
secutive thought — consecutive  thought,  she  repeated 
severely,  aware  already  of  the  interlaced  dancing  going 
on  in  her  brain.  What  was  she  going  to  do  about  Herr 
Dremmel?  About  going  home?  About — oh,  about 
anything? 

They  had  come  down  the  Rigi  soberly  and  in  the 
train.  Nobody,  as  usual,  spoke  to  them,  and  for  the 
first  time  in  their  friendship  neither  had  they  spoken 
to  each  other.  They  had  had  a  speechless  dinner.  He 
had  looked  preoccupied.  And  when  directly  after  it 
she  said  good  night,  he  had  drawn  her  out  into  the 
passage  and  solemnly  adjured  her,  while  the  hall-porter 
pretended  he  was  out  of  ear-shot,  to  have  done  with 
prevarications.  What  he  would  suggest,  he  said,  was  a 
comfortable  betrothal  next  day;  it  was  too  late  for  one 
that  night,  he  said,  pulling  out  his  watch,  but  next  day; 
and  as  she  retreated  sideways  step  by  step  up  the  stairs, 
silent  through  an  inability  immediately  to  find  an 
answer  that  seemed  tactful  enough,  he  had  eyed  her 
very  severely  and  inquired  of  her  with  a  raised  voice 
what,  then,  the  ado  was  all  about.  She  had  turned  at 
that,  giving  up  the  search  for  tact,  and  had  run  up  the 
remaining  stairs  rather  breathlessly,  feeling  that  Herr 
Dremmel  on  marriage  had  an  engulfing  quality;  and 
he,  after  a  moment's  perplexity  on  the  mat  at  the 
bottom,  had  gone  to  the  reading-room  a  baffled  man. 

Now  she  sat  at  the  window  considering. 

Her  journey  home  was  only  two  days  off,  and  the 
thought  of  what  would  be  said  to  her  when  she  got 
there  and  of  what  her  answers  would  be  like,  ran  down 
the  back  of  her  neck  and  spine  as  though  some  one  were 
drawing  a  light,  ice-cold  finger  over  the  shrinking  skin. 


44  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

She  had  been  persuading  herself  that  her  little  holiday 
was  harmless  and  natural;  and  now  this  business  with 
Herr  Dremmel  would,  she  felt,  do  away  with  all  that, 
and  justify  a  wrath  in  her  father  that  she  might,  else 
for  her  private  solace  and  encouragement  have,  looked 
upon  as  unreasonable.  It  is  a  peculiarity  of  parents, 
reflected  Ingeborg,  that  they  are  always  being  justified. 
However  small  and  innocent  what  you  are  doing  may 
be,  if  they  disapprove  something  turns  up  to  cause  them 
to  have  been  altogether  right.  She  remembered  little 
things,  small  occasions  of  her  younger  days. 
This  was  a  big  occasion,  and  what  had  turned  up  on  it 
was  Herr  Dremmel.  It  was  a  pity — oh,  it  was  a  pity 
she  hadn't  considered  before  she  left  London  so  impul- 
sively whether  when  she  got  back  to  Redchester  she  was 
going  to  be  untruthful  or  not.  She  had  considered 
nothing,  except  the  acuteness  of  the  joy  of  running 
away.  Now  she  was  faced  by  the  really  awful  question 
of  lying  or  not  lying.  It  was  ugly  to  lie  at  all.  It  was 
dreadful  to  lie  to  one's  father.  But  to  lie  to  a  bishop 
raised  the  operation  from  just  a  private  sin  which  God 
would  deal  with  kindly  on  being  asked,  to  a  crime  you 
were  punished  for  if  it  was  a  cathedral  you  did  it  to,  a 
real  crime,  the  crime  of  sacrilege.  Impossible  to  pro- 
fane a  sacred  and  consecrated  object  like  a  bishop. 
Doubly  and  trebly  impossible  if  you  were  that  object's 
own  daughter.  Her  tightly  folded  hands  went  cold  as 
she  realised  she  was  undoubtedly  going  to  be  truthful. 
She  was  every  bit  as  valiant  as  her  Swedish  grand- 
mother had  been,  that  grandmother  who  was  aware 
of  the  dangers  of  the  things  she  did  with  her  moun- 
tains and  her  gusty  lakes  and  defied  them,  but  her 
grandmother  knew  no  fear  and  Ingeborg  knew  it  very 
well.     Hers  was  the  real  courage  found  only   in  the 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  45 

entirely  terrified,  who,  terrified,  yet  see  the  thing, 
whatever  it  is,  doggedly  through.  She  was  faint,  yet 
pursuing. 

She  saw  much  terror  in  her  immediate  future.  She 
dreaded  having  to  be  courageous.  She  felt  she  was  too 
small  really  for  the  bravely  truthful  answering  of  her 
magnificent  father's  questions.  He  would  have  the 
catechism  and  the  confirmation  service  on  his  side,  as 
well  as  the  laws  of  right  behaviour  and  filial  love.  It 
didn't  seem  fair.  One  couldn't  argue  with  a  parent, 
one  couldn't  answer  back;  while  as  for  a  bishop,  one 
couldn't  do  anything  at  all  with  him  except  hastily 
agree.  There  was  just  a  possibility — but  how  remote— 
that  her  father  would  be  too  busy  to  ask  questions;  she 
sighed  as  she  reflected  how  little  she  could  count  on 
that,  and  how  the  most  superficial  inquiry  about 
her  aunt  or  the  dentist  would  bring  out  the  whole 
story. 

And  here  was  Herr  Dremmel  who  thought  nothing 
at  all  of  him,  even  in  regard  to  an  enormous  undertaking 
like  his  daughter's  marriage.  There  was  something 
sublime  in  such  detachment.  She  felt  the  largeness 
of  the  freedom  of  it  blowing  in  her  face  like  a  brisk, 
invigorating  wind.  There  seemed  to  be  no  hedges 
round  Herr  Dremmel.  He  was  as  untied-up  a  person 
as  she  had  ever  met.  He  cared  nothing  for  other  peo- 
ple's opinion,  that  chief  enslavement  of  her  home,  and 
he  was  an  orphan.  Sad  to  be  an  orphan,  thought  Inge- 
borg  sighing.  Sad,  of  course,  not  to  have  any  dear 
ones.  But  it  did  seem  to  be  a  condition  that  avoided 
the  dilemma  whose  horns  were  concealment  bv  means 
of  untruths  and  the  screwing  up  of  oneself  to  that  clam- 
mily cold  and  forlorn  condition,  having  courage. 

Of  course,   Herr  Dremmel   didn't   know  her  father. 


46  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

He  hadn't  faced  that  impressive  personality.  Would 
he  be  quite  so  detached  and  easily  indifferent  if  he  had? 
She  thought  with  a  shiver  of  what  such  a  meeting, 
supposing,  just  for  the  sake  of  supposing,  that  she 
allowed  herself  to  become  engaged,  would  be  like. 
Would  Herr  Dremmel  in  that  setting  of  carefully  sub- 
dued splendour,  of  wainscoting  and  oriels,  seem  to  her 
as  free  and  delightful  as  he  seemed  on  a  tour  of  frugal 
backgrounds?  Would  she,  in  the  presence  of  the  Bish- 
op's horrified  disapproval,  be  able  to  see  him  as  she  had 
been  seeing  him  now? 

She  had  not  explored  very  far  into  her  own  resources 
yet,  but  she  had  begun  lately  to  perceive  that  she  was 
pliable.  She  bent  easily,  she  felt,  and  deplored  having 
to  feel  in  the  direction  desired  by  the  persons  she  was 
with  and  who  laid  hold  of  her  with  authority.  It  is 
true  she  sprang  back  again,  as  she  had  discovered  so 
surprisingly  in  London,  the  instant  the  hold  was  re- 
laxed, but  it  seemed  that  she  sprang  only  to  do,  as  she 
now  with  a  headshake  admitted,  difficulty-bringing 
things.  And  her  training  in  acquiescence  and  distrust 
of  herself  was  very  complete,  and  back  in  her  home 
would  she  not  at  once  bend  into  the  old  curve  again? 
Was  it  possible,  would  it  ever  be  possible,  in  her 
father's  presence  to  disassociate  herself  from  his  points 
of  view?  What  his  view  of  Herr  Dremmel  would  be 
she  very  exactly  knew.  Did  she  want  to  disassociate 
herself  from  it? 

She  pushed  back  her  chair,  and  began  to  walk  quickly 
up  and  down  the  narrow  little  room.  If  she  didn't 
disassociate  herself  it  meant  marriage;  and  marriage  in 
stark  defiance  of  the  whole  of  her  world.  Redchester 
would  be  appalled.  The  diocese  would  grieve  for  its 
Bishop.     The  county  would  discuss  her  antagonistically 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  47 

at  a  hundred  tea-tables.     Well;  and  while  they  were 
doing  it,  where  would  she  be?     Her  blood  began  sud- 
denly to  dance.     She  was  seized,  as  she  had  been  in 
London,  by  that  overwhelming  desire  to  shake  off  old 
things  and  set  her  face  towards  the  utterly  new.     While 
all  these  people  were  nodding  and  whispering  in  their 
stuffy  stale  world  she  would  be  safe  in  East  Prussia,  a 
place  that  seemed  infinitely  remote,  a  place  Herr  Drem- 
mel  had  described  to  her  as  full  of  forests  and  water 
and  immense  stretches  of  waving  rye.     The  lakes  were 
fringed  with  rushes;  the  forests  came  down  to  their 
edges;  his  own  garden  ended  in  a  little  path  through  a 
lilac  hedge  that  took  you  down  between  the  rye  to  the 
rushes  and  the  water  and  the  first  great  pines.     Oh,  she 
knew  it  as  though  she  had  seen  it,  she  had  lured  him  on 
so  often  to  describing  it  to  her.     He  thought  nothing 
of  it;  talked,  indeed,  of  it  with  disgust  as  a  God-forsaken 
place.     Well,   it   was   these   God-forsaken   places   that 
her  body  and   spirit  cried   out  for.     Space,   freedom, 
quiet;  the  wind  ruffling  the  rye;  the  water  splashing 
softly  against  the  side  of  the  punt  (there  was  a  punt, 
she  had  extracted);  the  larks  singing  up  in  the  sunlight; 
the  shining  clouds  passing  slowly  across  the  blue.     She 
wanted  to  be  alone  with  these  things  after  the  years 
of  deafening  hurry  at  Redchester  with  a  longing  that 
was  like  home-sickness.    She  remembered,  somehow,  that 
once  she  used  to  be  with  them — long  ago,  far  away. 
.     .     .     And  there  used  to  be  little  things  when  you 
lay  face  downwards  on  the  grass,  little  lovely  things 
that  smelt  beautiful — wild-strawberry  leaves,  and  a  tiny 
aromatic  plant  with  a  white  flower  like  a  star  that  you 
rubbed  between  your  fingers. 

She  stood   still  a  moment,   frowning,   trying  to  re- 
member more;  it  wasn't  in  England.     .     .     .     But  even 


48  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

as  she  puzzled  the  vision  slipped  away  from  her  and 
was  lost. 

She  wanted  to  read,  and  walk,  and  think.  She 
was  hungry  to  read  at  last  what  she  chose,  and  walk 
at  last  where  she  chose,  and  think  at  last  exactly  what 
she  chose.  Was  the  Christian  Year  enough  for  one 
in  the  way  of  poetry?  And  all  those  mild  novels  her 
mother  read,  sandwiched  between  the  biographies  of 
more  bishops  and  little  books  of  comfort  with  crosses 
on  them  that  asked  rude  questions  as  to  whether  you 
had  been  greedy  or  dainty  or  had  used  words  with  a 
double  meaning  during  the  day — were  they  enough  for 
a  soul  that  had,  quite  alone,  with  no  father  giving 
directions,  presently  to  face  its  God? 

Her  family  held  strongly  that  for  daughters  to  read 
in  the  daytime  was  to  be  idle.  Well,  if  it  was,  thought 
Ingeborg  lifting  her  head,  that  head  that  drooped  so 
apologetically  at  home,  with  the  defiance  that  distance 
encourages,  then  being  idle  was  a  blessed  thing  and  the 
sooner  one  got  away  to  where  one  could  be  it,  uninter- 
ruptedly, the  better.  In  that  parsonage  away  in  East 
Prussia,  for  instance,  one  would  be  able  to  read  and 
read.  .  .  .  Herr  Dremmel  had  explained  a  hundred 
times  about  his  laboratory,  and  he  himself  locked  into 
it  and  only  asking  to  be  left  locked.  Surely  that  was 
an  admirable  quality  in  a  husband,  that  he  kept  him- 
self locked  up!  And  the  parsonage  was  on  the  edge 
of  the  village,  and  the  little  garden  at  the  back  had 
nothing  between  it  and  the  sunset  and  all  God's  other 
dear  arrangements  except  a  solitary  and  long-unused 
windmill.     .     .     . 

It  was  about  one  o'clock  in  the  morning  that  her 
courage,  however,  altogether  ebbed  at  the  prospect  of 
going  home.     What  would  it  be  like,  taking  up  her 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  49 

filialities  again,  and  all  of  them  henceforth  so  terribly 
tarnished?  She  would  be  a  returning  prodigal  for 
whom  no  calf  was  killed,  but  who  instead  of  the  suc- 
culences of  a  more  liberal  age  would  be  offered  an 
awful  opportunity  of  explaining  her  conduct  to  a  father 
who  would  interrupt  her  the  instant  she  began  and  do 
the  explaining  himself. 

How  was  she  going  to  face  it,  all  alone? 

If  only  she  could  have  been  in  love  with  Herr  Drem- 
mel!  With  what  courage  she  would  have  faced  her 
family  then,  if  she  had  been  in  love  with  him  and  come 
to  them  her  hand  in  his.  If  only  he  looked  more  like 
the  lovers  you  see  in  pictures,  like  the  one  in  Leighton's 
'Wedded,"  for  instance — a  very  beautiful  picture, 
Ingeborg  thought,  but  not  like  any  of  the  wedded  in 
Redchester — so  that  if  she  couldn't  be  in  love  she  could 
at  least  persuade  herself  she  was.  If  only  he  had  proper 
hair  instead  of  just  beaver.  She  liked  him  so  much. 
She  had  even  at  particular  moments  of  his  conversa- 
tion gone  so  far  as  to  delight  in  him.     But — marriage? 

What  was  marriage?  Why  did  they  never  talk  about 
it  at  home?  In  the  Bishop's  Palace  it  might,  for  all  the 
mentioning  it  got,  be  one  of  the  seven  deadly  sins. 
You  talked  there  of  the  married,  and  sometimes,  but 
with  reserve,  of  getting  married,  but  marriage  itself 
and  what  it  was  and  meant  was  never  discussed.  She 
had  received  the  impression,  owing  to  these  silences, 
that  though  it  was  God's  ordinance,  as  her  father  in  his 
official  capacity  at  weddings  reiterated,  it  was  a  re- 
luctant ordinance,  established  apparently  because  there 
seemed  no  other  way  of  getting  round  what  appeared 
to  be  a  difficulty.  What  was  the  difficulty?  She  had 
never  in  her  busy  life  thought  about  it.  Marriage  had 
not  concerned  her.     It  would  not  be  nice,  she  had  felt, 


50  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

unconsciously  adopting  the  opinion  of  her  environment, 
for  a  girl  who  was  not  going  to  marry  to  get  thinking 
of  it.  And  it  really  had  not  interested  her.  She  had 
quite  naturally  turned  her  eyes  away. 

But  now  this  question  of  facing  her  father,  this  need 
of  being  backed  up,  this  longing  to  get  away  from 
things,  forced  her  to  look.  Besides,  she  would  have  to 
give  Herr  Dremmel  some  sort  of  answer  in  the  morn- 
ing, and  the  facing  of  Herr  Dremmel  required  courage, 
too — of  a  different  kind,  but  certainly  courage.  She 
was  so  reluctant  to  hurt  or  disappoint.  It  had  seemed 
all  her  life  the  most  beautiful  of  pleasures  to  give  people 
what  they  wanted,  to  get  them  to  smile,  to  see  them 
look  content.  But  suppose  Herr  Dremmel,  before  he 
could  be  got  to  smile  and  look  content,  wanted  to 
clutch  her  again  as  he  had  clutched  her  on  the  top  of 
the  Rigi?  She  had  very  profoundly  disliked  it.  She 
had  been  able  to  resent  it  there  and  get  loose,  but  if 
she  were  married  and  he  clutched  could  she  still  resent? 
She  greatly  feared  not.  She  greatly  suspected,  now 
she  came  to  a  calm  consideration  of  it,  that  that  was 
what  was  the  matter  with  marriage:  it  was  a  series  of 
clutchings.  Her  father  had  no  doubt  realised  this  as 
she  was  realising  it  now,  and  very  properly  didn't  like 
it.  You  couldn't  expect  him  to.  That  was  why  he 
wouldn't  talk  about  it.  In  this  she  was  entirely  at 
one  with  him.  But  perhaps  Herr  Dremmel  didn't  like 
it,  either.  Wasn't  she  rather  jumping  at  conclusions 
in  imagining  that  he  did?  Hadn't  he  after  all  clutched 
rather  in  anger  up  there  than  in  anything  else?  And 
what  about  his  earnest  wish,  so  often  explained,  to  be 
left  all  day  locked  up  in  his  laboratory?  And  what 
about  his  praise,  that  very  afternoon,  of  chill  in  human 
relationships? 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  51 

At  that  moment  her  eye  was  arrested  by  something 
white  appearing  slowly  and  with  difficulty  beneath  her 
door.  She  sat  up  very  straight  and  stared  at  it,  watch- 
ing its  efforts  to  get  over  and  past  the  edge  of  her  mat. 
For  an  instant  she  wondered  whether  it  were  not  a  kind 
of  insect  ghost;  then  she  saw,  as  more  of  it  appeared, 
that  it  was  a  letter. 

She  held  her  breath  while  it  struggled  in.  Nobody 
had  ever  pushed  a  letter  under  her  door  before.  She 
grew  happy  instantly.  What  fun.  Her  heart  beat 
quite  fast  with  excitement  while  she  waited  to  hear 
footsteps  going  away  before  getting  up  to  fetch  it. 
Herr  Dremmel,  however,  must  have  been  in  his  goloshes, 
objects  from  which  he  was  seldom  separated,  for  she 
heard  nothing;  and  after  a  few  seconds  of  breathless 
listening  she  got  up  with  immense  caution  and  went  on 
tiptoe  to  the  letter  and  picked  it  up. 
i  "Why,"  she  thought,  pausing  for  a  moment  with  a 
sort  of  solemnity  before  opening  it,  "I  suppose  this  is 
my  first  love-letter." 

There  was  nothing  on  the  envelope  and  no  signature, 
and  this  was  what  it  said: 

"Little  One, 

"/  wish  to  tell  you  that  before  going  to  my  room  to- 
night I  instructed  the  hall-porter  to  order  a  betrothal  cake, 
properly  iced  and  with  what  is  customary  in  the  matter 
of  silver  leaves,  to  be  in  the  small  salon  adjoining  the 
smoking-room  to-morrow  morning  at  nine  o'clock.  Since 
no  man  can  be  betrothed  alone,  it  will  be  necessary  that 
you  should  be  there.'1'' 


CHAPTER  VI 

IT  WAS  a  perturbed  betrothal,  there  were  so 
many  people  at  it. 
Seven  ladies  besides  Ingeborg  appeared  in  the 
small  salon  adjoining  the  smoking-room  next  morning 
at  nine  o'clock.  What  Herr  Dremmel  had  done,  being 
ignorant  which  was  Ingeborg's  room  and  after  laborious 
thought  deciding  that  to  demand  her  number  of  the 
hall-porter  later  than  dusk  might  very  conceivably  cast 
a  slur  on  her  reputation,  young  ladies  being,  as  he  well 
knew,  of  all  living  creatures  the  most  easily  slurred, 
was  to  write  as  many  copies  of  the  letter  as  there  were 
doors  on  her  landing  and  thrust  them  industriously  one 
by  one  beneath  each  door,  strong  in  the  knowledge 
that  she  would  in  this  manner  inevitably  get  one  of 
them. 

He  was  greatly  pleased  with  this  plan.  It  seemed 
of  a  beautiful  simplicity  and  effectiveness.  "Being 
unaware  of  the  context,"  he  reasoned,  "no  lady  except 
the  right  one  will  be  able  to  guess  what  the  letter  can 
possibly  refer  to.  She  will  therefore  throw  it  aside  as 
an  obvious  mistake  and  think  no  more  about  it." 

But  the  ladies  did  think.  And  none  of  the  inhabitants 
of  the  third  floor,  exceptMr.  Ascough  who  neverthought 
anything  about  anything,  having  discovered  that  if 
once  you  begin  to  think  there  is  no  end  to  it,  and  a  dried 
and  brittle  little  man  lately  pensioned  off  by  the  firm 
he  had  been  clerk  to  and  taking  his  first  trip  on  the 

52 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  53 

continent  in  a  condition  of  profound  uninterestedness, 
threw  it  aside.  These  two  did;  but  the  seven  ladies 
not  only  did  not  throw  it  aside,  they  read  it  many  times, 
and  instead  of  thinking  no  more  about  it  thought  of 
nothing  else.  Even  Mrs.  Bawn,  who  had  been  a  widow 
for  six  months  and  was  heartily  tired  of  it,  was  pleased. 
She  liked,  particularly,  being  addressed  as  Little  One. 
There  was  a  blindness  about  this  that  suggested  genuine 
feeling.  She  had  not  been  so  much  pleased  since  her 
dear  Bawn,  now  half  a  year  in  glory,  had  told  her  one 
day,  before  their  marriage,  that  he  did  not  care  what 
anybody  said  he  maintained  that  she  was  handsome. 

They  all  thought  the  letter  very  virile,  and  that 
nothing  could  be  more  gentlemanly  than  its  restraint. 
Four  of  them  expected  a  different  male  member  of  the 
party  to  be  waiting  in  the  small  salon,  the  remaining 
three  expected  Mr.  Ascough.  Mr.  Ascough  had  a 
caressing  way  with  pats  of  butter  and  the  closing  of 
the  doors  of  rilled  flys  that  had  before  now  led  him,  on 
these  tours,  into  misapprehensions.  He  was  long  since 
married,  but  had  omitted  to  mention  it.  The  ladies, 
therefore,  when  they  arrived  in  the  small  salon  at  nine 
o'clock  did  not  find  Mr.  Ascough  nor  any  of  the  other 
four  friends  they  expected.  They  found,  surprisingly, 
each  other;  and,  standing  thick  and  black  near  a  dec- 
orated table  at  the  window  and  scowling  in  a  fresh  as- 
tonishment every  time  the  door  opened  and  another 
lady  came  in,  that  very  undesirable  fellow-tourist,  the 
German  gentleman. 

Each  one  immediately  knew  it  was  Ingeborg  who 
had  been  written  to,  and  that  the  letter  had  gone  astray. 
Each  one  also  thought  she  knew  that  Ingeborg  had  not 
got  the  letter  and  would  not  come.  But  each  one, 
except  Mrs.  Bawn,  was  helped  to  cover  up  her  shock 


54  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

by  being  sure  the  others  did  not  know  of  it;  and  the 
custom  of  life  lying  heavy  on  them  they  were  able, 
after  one  little  start  on  first  seeing  Herr  Dremmel,  to 
drift  into  the  corners  of  the  room  and  pretend  that 
what  they  had  come  for  was  books.  Except  Mrs.  Bawn. 
Mrs.  Bawn  saw,  stared,  turned  on  her  heel,  and  went 
out  again  volcanically ;  and  the  corridor  shook  to  her 
departing  footsteps  and  to  the  angry  unintentional 
rhymes  she  was  making  aloud  with  words  like  hoax  and 
jokes. 

With  astonishment  and  disgust  Herr  Dremmel  saw 
the  seven  ladies  accumulate.  It  was  most  unfortunate 
that  on  that  morning  of  all  mornings  the  small  salon, 
so  invariably  empty,  should  be  visited.  His  inex- 
perienced mind  did  not  connect  their  appearance  with 
his  letters;  it  never  occurred  to  him  that  his  reasoning 
as  to  what  they  would  do  on  receiving  them  could 
possibly  be  wrong.  Nor  did  he,  as  he  watched  the  door 
open  and  shut  seven  times  and  seven  times  admit  the 
wrong  woman,  guess  that  their  presence,  if  Ingeborg 
came,  would  immensely  help  his  betrothal. 

The  ladies,  fingering  dusty  Tauchnitzes  and  magazines 
and  eyeing  the  table  in  the  window  with  heads  as  much 
averted  as  could  be  combined  with  the  seeing  of  it, 
gradually  found  the  shock  they  had  had  being  soothed 
by  the  interest  they  felt  in  what  Herr  Dremmel  would 
do  when  he  realised  that  that  unladylike  Miss  Bullivant, 
all  unaware  of  what  was  waiting  for  her,  was  not  com- 
ing. Now  that  they  were  there  they  might  as  well  stay 
and  see  the  end  of  it.  It  was  really  very  interesting 
in  its  way;  so  German;  so  unlike,  thank  goodness, 
what  English  people  ever  did.  Would  he  stand  there 
all  day,  they  wondered,  with  that  really  most  im- 
properly suggestive  cake,  so  very  like  a  christening  cake? 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  55 

One  or  two  of  them  sat  down  squarely  on  the  sofas 
behind  months-old  magazines  round  whose  edges  they 
peeped,  making  it  clear  to  the  unhappy  man  that  they, 
at  least,  intended  to  stay  there;  and  they  all  coughed 
a  little  every  now  and  then  in  the  way  a  waiting  con- 
gregation coughs  in  church. 

Then  the  door  was  pushed  open  with  the  jerk  of 
somebody  who  is  either  in  a  hurry  or  has  come  to  a 
sudden  determination,  and  who  should  appear  but  that 
Miss  Bullivant. 

A  thrill  ran  through  the  seven  ladies,  and  they  in- 
stantly became,  behind  their  magazines,  stiff  with  ex- 
citement. Chance;  what  a  chance;  she  had  chanced 
to  look  in;  it  was  like  a  play;  dear  me,  thought  each 
of  the  seven. 

And  Ingeborg,  who  believed  as  lately  as  the  last 
moment  on  the  doormat  outside  that  she  had  only 
come  in  order  to  tell  Herr  Dremmel  she  was  not  coming, 
when  she  saw  the  cake,  very  white  and  bridal,  on  a 
white  cloth  with  white  flowers  in  pots  round  it,  and  on 
either  side  of  it  a  bottle  with  a  white  ribbon  about  its 
neck,  and  on  the  other  for  the  sake  of  symmetry  two 
glasses,  was  staggered.  How  could  she,  who  so  much 
loved  to  please,  to  make  happy,  cruelly  hurt  him,  spoil 
his  little  feast,  wipe  out  the  glow,  the  immense  relief 
that  beamed  from  his  face  when  he  saw  her? 

She  turned  round  quickly,  realising  the  presence  of 
the  seven  ladies.  Amazed  she  stared  at  them,  me- 
chanically counting  them.  How  could  she  make  him 
ridiculous,  humiliate  him,  before  all  those  women? 

Hesitating,  torn,  poised  on  the  tip  of  flight,  she 
stood  there.  Her  hand  was  on  the  door  to  open  it  again 
and  run;  but  Herr  Dremmel's  simplicity  came  to  his 
help  more  effectually  than  the  cunningest  plans.     He 


56  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

forgot  the  ladies,  and  stepping  forward  took  her  hand 
in  his  and  quite  simply  kissed  her  forehead,  sealing  her 
then  and  there,  with  the  perfect  frankness  of  his  coun- 
trymen when  engaged  in  legitimate  courtship,  as  his 
betrothed.  He  then  slipped  a  ring  he  wore  on  his  little 
finger  on  to  her  thumb,  that  being  the  only  bit  of  her 
hand  he  could  find  that  it  would  stay  on,  and  he  being 
free  from  prejudices  in  the  matter  of  fingers,  and  the 
thing — at  least  so  he  supposed — was  done. 

Ingeborg  in  her  bewilderment  let  these  things  happen 
to  her.  Her  thoughts  as  she  stood  being  betrothed 
were  jerking  themselves  into  a  perfect  tangle  of  knots. 
She  was  astonished  at  the  tricks  life  stoops  to.  A 
cake  and  the  eyes  of  seven  women,  Her  whole  future 
being  decided  by  a  cake  and  the  eyes  of  seven  women. 
Oh,  no,  it  couldn't  be.  It  was  only  that  she  couldn't 
stop  now.  Impossible,  utterly,  to  stop  now.  She  had 
never  dreamed  she  wouldn't  find  him  alone.  These 
women  were  all  witnesses.  He  had  kissed  her  before 
them  all.  His  methods  were  really  overwhelming. 
Suppose  her  father  could  see  her.  But  the  kiss  had 
been  administered  very  ceremoniously;  it  had  been 
quite  cooling;  such  a  one  as  even  a  bishop  might  feel 
justified  in  applying  to  the  brow  of  a  sick  person  or  a 
young  child.  Later,  at  a  more  convenient  time,  when 
the  pathetic  cake  was  out  of  sight,  when  these  women 
were  out  of  ear-shot,  she  would  tell  him  she  hadn't 
meant.     .      .     . 

Amazingly  she  found  herself  advancing  towards  the 
cake  with  Herr  Dremmel  and  standing  in  front  of  it 
with  him  hand  in  hand.  Oh,  the  mischief  people  got 
into  who  came  up  to  London  to  dentists!  She  now 
saw  what  provincial  dentists  were  for:  they  kept  you 
in  pain,  and  pain  kept  you  out  of  mischief.     For  the 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  57 

first  time  she  understood  what  her  spirit  had  till  then 
refused  to  accept,  the  teaching  so  popular  with  the 
Bishop  that  pain  was  a  necessary  part  of  the  scheme  of 
things.  Of  course.  You  were  safe  so  long  as  you  were 
in  pain.  In  that  condition  the  very  nearest  you  could 
get  to  the  most  seductive  temptation  was  to  glance  at 
it  palely,  with  a  sick  distaste.  And  you  stayed  at 
home,  and  were  grateful  for  kindnesses.  It  was  only 
when  you  hadn't  anything  the  matter  with  you  that 
you  ran  away  from  your  family  and  went  to  Lucerne 
and  took  up  with  a  strange  man  positively  to  the  ex- 
tent of  letting  him  promise  to  marry  you. 

Somebody  coughed  so  close  behind  her  that  it  made 
her  jump.  She  turned  round  nervously,  Herr  Dremmel 
still  holding  her  hand,  and  beheld  the  seven  ladies 
flocked  about  her  for  all  the  world  like  seven  brides- 
maids. 

They  had  hastily  consulted  together  in  whispers 
while  she  was  being  led  away  to  the  cake  as  to  whether 
they  ought  not  to  congratulate  her.  Their  hearts  were 
touched  by  the  respectful  ceremony  with  which  Herr 
Dremmel  had  conducted  his  betrothal.  It  had  had  the 
solemn  finality  of  a  marriage,  and  what  woman  can 
look  on  at  a  marriage  unmoved?  They  had  agreed  in 
whispers  that  this  was  one  of  those  moments  in  which 
one  lets  bygones  be  bygones.  The  two  at  the  altar — 
they  meant  at  the  cake — had  no  doubt  said  many 
terrible  and  vulgar  things  and  had  behaved  in  a  way  no 
lady  and  gentleman  would — the  girl,  for  instance, openly 
admitting  she  had  run  away  from  home;  but  what 
they  were  doing  now  at  least  was  beyond  reproach, 
and,  by  uniting,  two  blacks  were  after  all, in  spite  of  what 
people  said  about  its  not  being  possible,  going  to  make 
one  white.     At  any  rate  it  was  charitable  to  hope  so. 


58  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

So  they  cleared  their  throats  and  wished  her  joy. 

'Thank  you,"  said  Ingeborg  a  little  faintly,  looking 
from  one  to  the  other,  "it's  so  kind  of  you — but " 

They  then  shook  hands  with  Herr  Dremmel  and 
said  they  were  sure  they  wished  him  joy,  too,  and  he 
thanked  them  with  propriety  and  bows. 

"Such  a  thing  has  never  happened  on  a  Dent's 
Tour  before — oh,  no,  never  before  at  all  I'm  sure,"  said 
the  most  elderly  lady  nervously,  with  a  number  of  nods. 

'There  isn't  time  enough,  that's  what  I  sometimes 
think,"  said  the  young  lady  who  had  hurried  her  com- 
panion away  to  the  sunset  the  evening  before.  "  What's 
a  week?"     And  she  stared  at  the  cake  and  frowned. 

"Dent's  had  a  funeral  once,"  said  a  square  small 
lady  who  kept  her  hands  plunged  in  the  pockets  of  a 
grey  jersey. 

"Now  Miss  Jewks,  really "  protested  the  elderly 

lady.     "One  doesn't  mention " 

'Well,  it  wasn't  their  fault,  Miss  Andrews.  They 
didn't  want  to  have  it,  I'm  sure.  It  was  a  gentleman 
from  Gipsy  Hill " 

'What  a  beautiful — er — cake,"  hastily  interrupted 
the  elderly  lady. 

"Funny  thing,  I  sometimes  think,"  continued  Miss 
Jewks,  "to  go  for  a  holiday  and  die  instead." 

'Those   silver   leaves "    said   the  elderly  lady, 

raising  her  voice,  "I  call  them  dainty." 

"It's  like  a  wedding-cake,  isn't  it?"  said  the  young 
lady  of  the  sunset,  peering  close  at  it  with  a  face  of 
gloom. 

'Will  you  not,  Ingeborg,"  said  Herr  Dremmel, 
calling  her  for  the  first  time  by  her  name,  "cut  the 
cake?  And  perhaps  these  ladies  will  do  us  the  honour 
of  tasting  it." 


to 


to 


to 


5» 

to      to 
g     to 


v.  * 

v. 

to      to 


o 
to 

£ 


O 

s 

s 

o 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  59 

She  did  not  recognise  him  in  this  persistent  cere- 
moniousness.  Every  trace  of  his  usual  lax  behaviour 
was  gone,  his  ease  and  familiarity  of  speech,  and  he  was 
as  stiff  and  correct  and  grave  as  if  he  were  laying  a 
foundation  stone  or  opening  a  museum.  They  were  the 
manners,  though  she  did  not  know  it,  which  all  Ger- 
mans are  trained  to  produce  on  public  occasions. 

"Oh,  thank  you " 

"Oh,  you're  really  very  kind " 


"Oh,  thank  you  very  much  I'm  sure ,; 

There  was  a  murmur  of  awkward  and  reluctant 
thanks.  The  seven  ladies  were  not  at  all  certain  that 
their  cordiality  ought  to  stretch  as  far  as  cake.  They 
had  been  moved  by  an  impulse  that  did  honour  to 
their  womanliness  to  offer  congratulations,  but  they  did 
not  for  all  that  forget  the  dreadful  things  the  couple 
had  constantly  been  heard  talking  about  and  the  many 
clear  proofs  it  had  provided  that  it  was  what  Dent's 
Tours  were  accustomed  to  describe  as  no  class;  and 
though  they  all  liked  cake,  and  were  getting  steadily 
hungrier  as  the  Dent  week  drew  to  its  close,  they  were 
doubtful  as  to  the  social  wisdom  of  eating  it.  It  would 
be  very  unpleasant  if  these  people,  encouraged,  were 
later  on  to  presume;  if  they  were  to  try  to  use  the  eaten 
cake  as  a  weapon  for  forcing  their  way  into  English 
society.  If,  in  a  word,  when  the  Tour  got  back  to  Eng- 
land, they  were  to  want  to  call. 

So  they  took  the  cake  reluctantly  that  Ingeborg,  in 
a  sort  of  dream,  cut  and  offered  them;  and  with  even 
more  reluctance  they  sipped  the  wine  in  which  the 
German  gentleman  requested  them  to  drink  the  newly 
betrothed  couple's  health. 

'But "  said  Ingeborg,  trying  to  rouse  herself  even 

at  this  eleventh  hour. 


60  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"True.  There  are  not  enough  glasses.  I  will 
ring  for  more,"  was  the  way  Herr  Dremmel  finished  her 
sentence  for  her. 

The  immense  official  promptness  of  him!  She  felt 
numbed. 

And  when  the  glasses  were  brought  there  was  an- 
other ceremony — a  clinking  of  Herr  DremmePs  glass 
with  each  glass  in  turn,  his  heels  together  as  in  the 
days  of  his  soldiering,  his  body  stiff  and  his  face  a 
miracle  of  solemnity;  and  before  drinking  he  made  a 
speech,  the  Asti  held  high  in  front  of  him,  in  which  he 
thanked  the  ladies  for  their  good  wishes  on  behalf  of 
his  betrothed,  Miss  Ingeborg  Bullivant,  whose  virtues 
he  dwelt  upon  singly  and  at  length  in  resounding 
periods,  before  proceeding  to  assure  those  present  of 
his  firm  resolve  to  prove,  by  the  devotion  of  the  rest  of 
his  life,  the  extremity  of  his  gratitude  for  the  striking- 
proof  she  had  given  before  them  all  of  her  confidence  in 
him;  and  every  sentence  seemed  to  set  another  and  a 
heavier  seal  on  her  as  a  creature  undoubtedly  bound 
to  marry  him. 

Dimly  she  began  to  realise  something  of  the  steely 
grip  of  a  German  engagement.  She  wondered  whether 
there  were  any  more  room  left  on  her  forehead  for 
further  seals.  She  felt  that  it  must  be  covered  with 
great  red  things,  scrawled  over  with  the  inscription: 

Dremmel's. 

Well,  she  was  after  all  not  a  parcel  to  be  picked  up 
and  carried  away  by  the  first  person  who  found  her 
lying  about,  and  the  minute  she  was  alone  with  him 
she  would,  she  mast,  tell  him  that  what  she  had  really 
come  down  for,  though  appearances  were  certainly  by 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  61 

this  time  rather  against  her,  was  to  refuse  him.  She 
would  be  as  gentle  as  possible,  but  she  would  be  plain 
and  firm.  The  minute  these  women  left  them  alone 
she  would  tell  him. 

With  a  start  she  saw  that  the  women  were  leaving 
them  alone,  and  that  the  minute  had  come.  She 
wanted  them  not  to  go;  she  wanted  to  keep  them  there 
at  any  cost.  She  even  made  a  step  after  them  as  the 
last  one,  nodding  to  the  end,  went  out  and  shut  the 
door,  but  Herr  Dremmel  still  had  hold  of  her  hand. 

When  the  door  had  finally  shut  she  turned  to  him 
quickly.  Her  head  was  thrown  back,  her  eyes  were 
full  of  a  screwed-up  courage. 

"But    you    know "    she  began,   determined   to 

clear  things  up,  however  much  it  might  hurt  them  both. 

And  again  he  promptly  finished  her  sentence  for 
her,  this  time  by  enfolding  her  in  his  arms  and  kissing 
her  with  a  largeness  and  abundance  which  no  bishop, 
her  mind  flashed  as  her  body  stood  stiff  with  surprise 
and  horror,  could  possibly  approve. 

She  felt  engulfed. 

She  felt  she  must  be  disappearing  altogether. 

He  seemed  infinitely  capacious  and  soft. 

"Oh,  but  I  can't — I  won't — oh,  stop — oh,  stop — 
it's  a  mistake "  she  tried  to  get  out  in  gasps. 

"My  little  wife,"  was  all  the  notice  Herr  Dremmel 
took  of  that. 


CHAPTER  VII 

IT  WAS  raining  at  Redchester  when  Ingeborg  got 
out  at  the  station  a  week  and  a  day  after  she  left 
it — the  soft  persistent  fine  rain,  hardly  more  than  a 
mist,  peculiar  to  that  much-soaked  corner  of  England. 
The  lawns  in  the  gardens  she  passed  as  her  fly  crawled  up 
the  hill  were  incredibly  green,  the  leaves  of  the  lilac 
bushes  glistened  with  wet,  each  tulip  was  a  cup  of 
water,  the  roads  were  chocolate,  and  a  thick  grey 
blanket  of  cloud  hung  warm  over  the  town,  tucking 
it  in  all  round  and  keeping  out  any  draught  that  might 
bite  and  sting  the  inhabitants,  she  thought,  into  real 
living. 

The  porter  told  her  it  was  fine  growing  weather, 
and  she  wondered  stupidly  why,  after  the  years  she 
had  had  of  the  sort  of  thing,  she  had  had  not  grown,  then, 
more  thoroughly  herself.  A  retired  colonel  she  knew 
— she  knew  all  the  retired  colonels — waved  his  umbrella 
and  shouted  a  genial  inquiry  after  her  toothache,  and 
she  looked  at  him  with  a  dead,  ungrateful  eye.  A 
passing  postman  touched  his  cap,  and  she  turned  the 
other  way.  The  same  sensible  female  figures  she  had 
seen  all  her  life  draped  in  the  same  sensible  mackin- 
toshes bowed  and  smiled,  and  she  pretended  she  hadn't 
seen  them.  Everybody,  in  fact,  behaved  as  though  she 
were  still  good,  which  was  distressing,  embarrassing, 
and  productive  of  an  overwhelming  desire  to  shut  her 
eyes  and  hide. 

62 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  63 

There  were  the  shops,  with  the  things  in  the  win- 
dows unchanged  since  she  left  nine  days  ago,  the  same 
ancient  novelties  nobody  ever  bought,  the  same  flies 
creeping  over  the  same  buns.  There  was  the  book- 
seller her  Christian  Year  had  come  from,  his  windows 
full  of  more  of  them,  endless  supplies  for  endless  dieted 
daughters,  vegetarians  in  literature  she  called  them  to 
herself,  forcibly  vegetabled  vegetarians;  and  there  was 
the  silversmith  who  provided  the  Bishop  with  the  crosses 
after  a  good  Florentine  fifteenth-century  pattern  he 
presented  to  those  of  his  confirmation  candidates  who 
were  the  daughters  in  the  diocese  of  the  great.  The 
Duke's  daughter  had  one.  The  Lord-Lieutenant's 
daughter  had  one.  On  this  principle  Ingeborg  herself 
had  been  given  one,  and  wore  it  continually  night  and 
day,  as  her  father  expected,  under  her  dress,  where  it 
bruised  her.  It  was  pleasant  to  her  father  to  be  able 
to  recollect,  in  the  stress  and  dust  of  much  in  his  work 
that  was  unrefreshing,  how  there  was  a  yearly  increas- 
ing though  severely  sifted  number  of  gentle  virgin 
blouses  belonging  to  the  best  families  beneath  which 
lay  and  rhythmically  heaved  this  silver  reminder  of  the 
wearer's  Bishop  and  of  her  God. 

"Father,"  Ingeborg  said,  after  she  had  worn  hers 
for  a  week,  "may  I  take  my  cross  off  at  night?" 

'Why,  Ingeborg?"  he  had  inquired;  adding  quietly, 
"Did  our  Saviour?" 

"No;  but — you  see  when  one  turns  round  in  one's 
sleep  it  sticks  into  one." 

"Sticks,  Ingeborg?"  the  Bishop  said  gently,  raising 
his  eyebrows  at  such  an  expression  applied  to  such  an 
object. 

'Yes,  and  I'm  getting  awfully  bruised."     She  was 
still  in  the  schoolroom,  and  still  saying  awfully. 


64  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"By  His  stripes  we  are  healed,"  said  the  Bishop, 
shutting  up  the  conversation  as  one  shuts  up  a  book. 

In  spite  of  the  wet  warmth  she  shivered  as  the 
silversmith's  window  reminded  her  of  this.  It  had 
happened  years  ago,  but  even  farther  back,  as  far  back 
as  she  could  remember,  every  time  she  had  asked  leave 
of  her  father  to  do  anything  it  had  been  refused;  and 
refused  with  bits  of  Bible,  which  was  so  peculiarly 
silencing. 

And  now  here  she  was  about  to  face  him  covered  with 
the  leaves  she  had  not  asked  for  at  all  but  had  so  tre- 
mendously taken,  and  going  to  ask  the  most  tremendous 
one  of  all,  the  leave  to  marry  Herr  Dremmel. 

For  that  was  how  the  last  two  days  of  her  Dent's 
Tour  had  been  spent,  in  being  openly  engaged  to  Herr 
Dremmel.  She  had  found  her  attempts  to  explain  that 
she  was  not  so  really  availed  nothing  against  his  con- 
viction that  she  was.  And  public  opinion,  the  public 
opinion  of  the  whole  Tour,  also  never  doubted  but  that 
she  was — had  not  seven  of  its  most  reliable  members 
actually  seen  her  in  the  act  of  becoming  it?  In  fact 
it  not  only  did  not  doubt  it,  it  was  sternly  determined 
that  she  should  be  engaged  whether  she  liked  it  or  not. 
It  was  the  least,  the  Tour  felt,  that  she  could  do. 
So  that  there  was  nothing  for  it  now  but  to  face  the 
Bishop. 

She  felt  cold.  No  amount  of  the  familiar  moist 
stuffiness  could  warm  her.  Vainly  she  tried  to  sit  up, 
to  be  proud  and  brave,  to  recapture  something  at  least 
of  the  courage  that  had  seemed  so  easy  just  at  the  end 
in  Switzerland  with  Herr  Dremmel  to  laugh  at  her 
doubts.  Her  head  would  droop,  and  her  hands  and 
feet  were  like  stones. 

It  was  the  place,  the  place,  she  thought,  the  hypnotic 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  65 

effect  of  it,  of  her  old  environment.  The  whole  of 
Redchester  was  heavy  with  recollections  of  past  obedi- 
ences. Not  once  had  she  ever  in  Redchester  even  dreamt 
of  rebellion.  She  had  questioned  latterly,  in  the  re- 
moter and  less  filial  corners  of  her  heart,  but  she  had 
never  so  much  as  thought  of  rebellion.  And  the  mo- 
ment she  got  away  out  of  sight  and  hearing  of  home, 
things  she  knew  here  were  wicked  had  appeared  to  be 
quite  good  and  extremely  natural.  How  strange  that 
was.  And  how  strange  that  now  she  was  back  every- 
thing was  beginning  to  seem  wicked  again.  What 
was  a  poor  wretch  to  do,  she  asked  herself  with  sudden 
passion,  confronted  by  these  shuffling  standards  that 
behaved  as  if  they  were  dancing  a  quadrille?  This 
was  the  place  in  which  for  years  her  conscience  had 
been  cockered  to  size  and  delicacy;  and  though  it  had 
become  temporarily  tough  in  Herr  DremmePs  company 
she  felt  it  relapsing  with  every  turn  of  the  wheels  more 
and  more  into  its  ancient  softness. 

Yet  she  undoubtedly,  conscience-stricken  and  fright- 
ened or  not,  had  to  tell  her  father  what  she  had  done. 
She  had  got  to  be  brave,  and  if  needs  be  she  had  got 
to  defy.  She  was  bound  to  Herr  Dremmel.  He  had 
only  gone  home  to  set  his  house  in  order,  and  then,  he 
announced,  she  meanwhile  having  prepared  the  Bishop, 
he  was  coming  to  Redchester  to  marry  her.  Prepared 
the  Bishop!  She  shivered.  Herr  Dremmel  had  tried 
to  marry  her  in  Lucerne;  but  the  Swiss,  it  seemed,  would 
not  be  hurried,  so  that  here  she  was,  and  within  the  next 
few  hours  she  was  going  to  have  to  prepare  the  Bishop. 

She  shut  her  eyes  and  thought  of  Herr  Dremmel; 
of  Robert,  as  she  was  was  learning  to  call  him.  With 
all  her  heart  she  liked  him.  And  he  had  been  so  kind 
when  he  found  she  really  disliked  being  engulfed  in 


66  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

embraces,  and  had  restricted  his  exhibitions  of  affec- 
tion to  the  kissing  of  her  hand,  telling  her  he  could 
very  well  wait  till  later  on,  sure  that  she  would  after 
marriage  warm,  as  he  had  explained  to  her  on  the  Rigi 
all  women  did,  to  a  just  appreciation  of  the  value  of 
the  caresses  of  an  honest  man.  He  had  also  produced 
a  number  of  German  love-names  from  some  hitherto 
fallow  corner  of  his  mind,  and  garnished  his  conversa- 
tion with  them  in  a  way  that  made  her  who,  nourished 
as  she  had  been  on  the  noble  language  of  the  Bible  and 
the  Prayer-book,  was  instantly  responsive  to  the  charm 
of  words,  laugh  and  glow  with  pleasure.  She  was  his 
Little  Heart,  his  Little  Tiny  Treasure,  his  Little  Sugar 
Lamb — a  dozen  little  sweet  diminished  German  things 
translated  straight  away  just  as  they  were  into  English. 
The  freshness  of  it!  The  freshness  of  being  admired 
and  petted  after  the  economies  in  these  directions 
practised  in  her  home.  And  his  ring  at  that  very  mo- 
ment dangled  beneath  her  dress  on  the  same  chain  as  her 
father's  cross.  Yes,  she  was  bound  to  him.  Duty, 
she  perceived,  could  be  a  very  blessed  thing  sometimes 
if  it  protected  one  from  some  other  duty.  It  was  Herr 
Dremmel  now  who  had  become  her  Duty. 

She  put  up  her  hand  to  get  courage  by  feeling  the 
ring,  for  her  spirit  was  fainting  within  her — she  had 
just  caught  sight  of  the  cathedral.  The  ring  had  been 
slung  on  the  chain  alongside  the  confirmation  cross 
because  it  was  impossible  to  wear  it  on  her  thumb;  and 
out  there  in  Switzerland,  where  one  was  simple,  it  had 
seemed  a  most  natural  and  obvious  place  to  put  it.  Yet 
now,  as  the  fly  rattled  over  the  cobbles  of  the  Close  and 
the  familiar  cathedral  rose  before  her  like  a  menace, 
she  hung  her  head  and  greatly  doubted  but  what  the 
juxtaposition  was  wicked. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  67 

Nobody  was  on  the  doorstep  when  she  arrived  be- 
neath the  great  cedar  that  spread  its  shade,  an  inten- 
sified bit  of  dripping  gloom  where  all  was  gloom  and 
dripping,  across  from  the  lawn  to  the  Palace's  entrance, 
except  the  butler,  whose  black  clothes  struck  her  in- 
stantly as  very  neat  and  smooth,  and  his  underling, 
a  youth  kept  carefully  a  little  on  the  side  of  a  suitable 
episcopal  shabbiness.  She  had  telegraphed  her  train 
from  Paddington,  but  that,  of  course,  was  no  reason 
why  any  one  should  be  on  the  doorstep.  It  was 
she  whose  business  lay  with  doorsteps  when  people 
arrived  or  left,  she  was  the  one  who  welcomed  and  who 
sped,  and,  since  she  could  not  welcome  herself,  there 
was  nobody  there  to  do  it. 

She  stole  a  nervous  look  at  Wilson  as  he  helped  her 
out,  but  his  face  was  a  blank.  The  boy  on  her  other 
side  had  an  expression,  she  thought,  as  though  under 
happier  conditions  he  might  have  let  himself  go  in  a 
smirk,  and  she  turned  her  eyes  away  with  a  little  sick 
feeling.  Did  they  know  already,  all  of  them,  that  she 
had  left  her  aunt's  a  week  ago?  But,  indeed,  that 
seemed  a  small  thing  now  compared  with  the  things 
she  had  done  since. 

"I'm  a  dead  girl,"  thought  Ingeborg,  as  she  passed 
beneath  her  parents'  porch. 

The  servants  brought  in  her  luggage,  off  which  in 
her  newness  at  deceit  she  had  not  thought  to  scrape 
the  continental  labels,  and  she  crossed  the  hall,  tread- 
ing on  the  dim  splashes  of  lovely  blurred  colour  that 
fell  from  the  vast  stained  glass  windows  on  to  the  stone 
flags  of  its  floor.  It  was  the  noblest  hall,  as  bare  of 
stuffs  and  carpets  as  the  cathedral  itself,  and  she  looked 
more  than  insignificant  going  across  it  to  the  carved 
oak  door  that  opened  into  the  wide  panelled  passage 


68  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

leading  to  the  drawing-room,  a  little  figure  braced  to 
a  miserable  courage,  the  smallest  thing  to  be  going 
to  defy  powers  of  which  this  magnificence  was  only  one 
of  the  expressions. 

Her  mother  was  as  usual  on  her  sofa  near  a  fire  whose 
heat,  that  warm  day,  was  mitigated  by  the  windows 
being  wide  open.  Beside  her  was  her  own  particular 
table  with  the  usual  flowers,  needlework,  devotional 
books,  and  biographies  of  good  men.  It  was  difficult 
to  believe  her  mother  had  got  off  that  sofa  nine  times 
to  go  to  bed,  had  dressed  and  undressed  and  had  meals 
— thirty-six  of  them,  counted  Ingeborg  mechanically, 
while  she  looked  about  for  the  Bishop,  if  you  excluded 
the  before  breakfast  tea,  forty-five  if  you  didn't — since 
she  saw  her  last,  so  immovable  did  she  appear,  so  ex- 
actly in  the  same  position  and  composed  into  the  same 
lines  as  she  had  been  nine  days  before.  The  room  was 
full  of  the  singing  of  thrushes,  quite  deafeningly  full, 
as  she  opened  the  door,  for  the  windows  gave  straight 
into  the  green  and  soppy  garden  and  it  was  a  day  of 
many  worms.  Judith  was  making  tea  as  far  away 
from  the  fire  as  she  could  get,  and  there  was  no  sign 
of  the  Bishop. 

"Is  that  you,  Ingeborg?"  said  her  mother,  turning 
her  face,  grown  pale  with  years  of  being  shut  up,  to 
the  door. 

Ingeborg's  mother  had  found  the  sofa  as  other  people 
find  salvation.  She  was  not  ill.  She  had  simply  dis- 
covered in  it  a  refuge  and  a  very  present  help  in  all 
the  troubles  and  turmoil  of  life,  and  in  especial  a  shield 
and  buckler  when  it  came  to  dealing  with  the  Bishop. 
It  is  not  easy  for  the  married,  she  had  found  when  first 
casting  about  for  one,  to  hit  on  a  refuge  from  each 
other  that  shall  be  honourable  to  both.    In  a  moment 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  69 

of  insight  she  perceived  the  sofa.  Here  was  a  blameless 
object  that  would  separate  her  entirely  from  duties  and 
responsibilities  of  every  sort.  It  was  respectable;  it 
was  unassailably  effective;  it  was  not  included  in  the 
Commandments.  All  she  had  to  do  was  to  cling  to  it, 
and  nobody  could  make  her  do  or  be  anything.  She 
accordingly  got  on  to  it  and  had  stayed  there  ever  since, 
mysteriously  frail,  an  object  of  solicitude  and  sympathy, 
a  being  before  whose  helplessness  the  most  aggressive 
or  aggrieved  husband  must  needs  be  helpless,  too.  And 
she  had  gradually  acquired  the  sofa  look,  and  was  now 
very  definitely  a  slightly  plaintive  but  persistently  pa- 
tient Christian  lady. 

"Is  that  you,  Ingeborg?"  she  said,  turning  her 
head. 

"Yes,  mother,"  said  Ingeborg,  hesitating  in  spite  of 
herself  on  the  threshold. 

She  looked  round  anxiously,  but  the  Bishop  was  not 
lurking  anywhere  in  the  big  room. 

"  Come  in,  dear,  and  shut  the  door.  You  see  the  win- 
dows are  open." 

Judith  glanced  up  at  her  a  moment  from  her  tea- 
making  and  did  not  move.  Even  in  the  midst  of  her 
terrors  Ingeborg  was  astonished,  after  not  having  seen 
it  for  a  while,  at  her  loveliness.  She  seemed  to  have 
taken  the  sodden  greys  of  the  afternoon,  the  dulness 
and  the  gathering  dusk,  and  made  out  of  their  gloom 
the  one  perfect  background  for  her  beauty. 

"We  thought  you  would  have  written,"  said  Mrs. 
Bullivant,  putting  her  cheek  in  a  position  convenient 
for  the  kiss  that  was  to  be  applied  to  it. 

"I — I  telegraphed,"  said  Ingeborg,  applying  the 
kiss. 

"Yes,  dear,  but  only  about  your  train." 


70  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 


«c 


T — thought  that  was  enough." 

"But,  Ingeborg  dear,  such  a  great  occasion.  One 
of  the  great  occasions  of  life.  We  did  expect  a  little 
notice,  didn't  we,  Judith?" 

"Notice?"  said  Ingeborg  faintly. 

"Your  father  was  wounded,  dear.  He  thought  it 
showed  so  little  real  love  for  your  parents  and  your  sister." 

"But "  said  Ingeborg,  looking  from  one  to  the 

other. 

"  We  wrote  to  you  at  once — directly  we  knew.  Didn't 
we,  Judith?" 

"Of  course,"  said  Judith. 

Ingeborg  stood  flushing  and  turning  pale.  Had  one 
of  the  Dent's  Tour  people  somehow  found  out  where 
she  lived  and  written  about  her  engagement  and  the 
impossible  had  happened  and  they  weren't  going  to 
mind?  Was  it  possible?  Did  they  know?  And  were 
taking  it  like  this?  If  only  she  had  called  at  her  aunt's 
house  on  the  way  to  Paddington  and  got  the  letters — 
what  miserable  hours  of  terror  she  would  have  been 
spared ! 

"But "  she  began.     Then  the  immense  relief  of 

it  suddenly  flooded  her  whole  being  with  a  delicious 
warm  softness.  They  did  know.  Somehow.  And  a 
miracle  had  happened.     Oh,  how  kind  God  was! 

She  dropped  on  her  knees  by  the  sofa  and  began  to 
kiss  her  mother's  hand,  which  surprised  Mrs.  Bullivant; 
and  indeed  it  is  a  foreign  trick,  picked  up  mostly  by 
those  who  go  abroad.  "Mother,"  she  said,  "are  you 
really  pleased  about  it?    You  don't  mind  then?" 

"Mind?"  said  Mrs.  Bullivant. 

"Oh,  how  glad,  how  glad  I  am.  And  father?  What 
does  he  say?     Does  he — does  he  mind?" 

"Mind?"  repeated  Mrs.  Bullivant. 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  71 

"Father  is  very  pleased,  I  think,"  said  Judith,  with 
what  in  one  less  lovely  would  have  been  a  slight  pursing 
of  the  lips.  And  she  twisted  a  remarkable  diamond 
ring  she  was  wearing  straight. 

"Father  is — pleased?"  echoed  Ingeborg,  quite  awe- 
struck by  the  amount  and  quality  of  these  reliefs. 

"I  must  say  I  think  it  is  really  good  of  your  dear 

father  to  be  pleased,  when  he  loses "  began  Mrs. 

Bullivant. 

"Oh,  yes,  yes,"  interrupted  the  overcome  Ingeborg, 
"it's  a  wonder — a  wonder  of  God." 

"Ingeborg  dear,"  her  mother  gently  rebuked,  for 
this  was  excess;  and  Judith  looked  still  more  what 
would  have  been  a  little  pursed  in  any  other  woman. 

"When  he  loses,"  then  resumed  Mrs.  Bullivant  with 
the  plaintive  determination  of  one  who  considers  it  the 
least  she  may  expect  as  a  sofa-ridden  mother  to  be 
allowed  to  finish  her  sentences,  "so  much." 

'Yes,  yes,"  assented  Ingeborg  eagerly,  whose  appre- 
ciation of  her  parents'  attitude  was  so  warm  that  she 
almost  felt  she  must  stay  and  bask  in  its  urbanity  for- 
ever and  not  go  away  after  all  to  the  bleak  distance  of 
East  Prussia. 

'Your  father  loses  not  only  a  daughter,"  continued 
Mrs.  Bullivant,  "but  £500  a  year  of  his  income." 

'Would  one  call  it  his  income?"  inquired  Judith, 
politely  but  yet,  if  one  could  suspect  a  being  with  an 
angel's  face  of  such  a  thing,  with  some  slight  annoyance. 
"I  thought  our  grandmother " 

"Judith  dear,  the  £500  a  year  your  grandmother 
left  to  each  of  vou  was  onlv  to  be  yours  when  you 
married,"  explained  Mrs.  Bullivant,  also  with  some 
slight  annoyance  beneath  her  patience.  "Till  you 
married  it  was  to  be  mine — your  father's,  I  mean,  of 


72  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

course.  And  if  you  never  did  marry  it  would  have 
been  mine — I  mean  his — always." 

Ingeborg  had  heard  of  her  Swedish  grandmother's 
will,  but  had  long  ago  forgotten  it,  marriage  being 
remote  and  money  never  of  any  interest  to  her  who  had 
no  occasions  for  spending.  Now  her  heart  bounded 
with  yet  more  thankfulness.  What  a  comfort  it  would 
be  to  Robert.  How  it  would  help  him  in  his  research. 
Extraordinary  that  she  should  have  forgotten  it.  When 
he  told  her  of  his  stipend  of  five  thousand  marks — £250 
it  was  in  English  money,  he  explained,  and  there  was 
the  house  and  land  free — most  of  which  went  in  his 
experiments,  but  what  was  left  being  ample,  he  said, 
for  the  living  purposes  of  reasonable  beings  if  they 
approached  it  in  a  proper  spirit,  it  all  depending,  he 
said,  on  whether  they  approached  it  in  a  proper  spirit, 
"And  after  all,"  he  had  added  triumphantly,  throwing 
out  his  chest  just  as  she  was  about  to  inquire  what  the 

proper  spirit  was,  "no  man  can  call  me  thin " — to 

think  she  had  forgotten  the  substantial  help  she  was 
going  to  be  able  to  bring  him! 

The  full  splendour  of  her  father's  generosity  in  being 
pleased  at  her  engagement  was  now  revealed  to  her. 
The  relief  of  it.  The  glad,  warm  relief.  So  must  one 
feel  who  is  born  again,  all  new,  all  clean  from  old  mis- 
takes and  fears.  She  felt  lifted  up,  extraordinarily 
happy,  extraordinarily  good,  more  in  harmony  with 
Providence  and  the  Bible  than  she  had  been  since 
childhood.  She  would  have  been  willing,  and  indeed 
found  it  perfectly  natural,  to  kneel  down  with  her 
mother  and  Judith  then  and  there  and  say  prayers 
together  out  loud.  She  would  have  been  willing  on  the 
crest  of  her  wave  of  gratefulness  quite  readily  to  give 
up  Herr  Dremmel  in  return  for  the  family's  immense 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  73 

kindness  in  not  asking  her  to  give  him  up.  She  had 
felt  nothing  like  this  exaltation  before  in  her  life,  this 
complete  being  in  harmony  with  the  infinite,  this  con- 
fidence in  the  inherent  goodness  of  things,  except  on 
the  afternoon  her  tooth  was  pulled  out. 

"Oh,"  she  exclaimed, laying  her  cheek  on  her  mother's 
hand,  "oh,  I  do  hope  you'll  like  Robert!" 

"Robert?"  said  Mrs.  Bullivant;  and  at  the  tea- 
table  there  was  a  sudden  silence  among  the  cups,  as 
though  they  were  holding  their  breath. 

"His  name's  Robert,"  said  Ingeborg,  still  with  her 
cheek  on  her  mother's  hand,  her  eyes  shut,  her  face  a 
vision  of  snuggest,  safest  contentment. 

'What  Robert,  Ingeborg?"  inquired  Mrs.  Bullivant, 
shifting  her  position  to  stare  down  more  conveniently 
at  her  daughter. 

"Herr  Dremmel.  It's  his  Christian  name.  He's 
got  to  have  one,  you  know,"  said  Ingeborg,  still  with 
her  eyes  shut  in  the  blissfulness  of  perfect  confi- 
dence. 

"Herr  who?"  said  Mrs.  Bullivant,  a  sharper  note  of 
life  in  her  voice  than  there  had  been  for  years.  "Here's 
your  father,"  she  added  quickly,  hastily  composing  her- 
self into  the  lines  of  the  unassailable  invalid  again  as 
the  door  opened  and  the  Bishop  came  in. 

Ingeborg  jumped  up.  "Oh,  father,"  she  cried, 
running  to  him  with  the  entire  want  of  shyness  one 
may  conceive  in  the  newly  washed  and  forgiven  soul 
when  it  first  arrives  in  heaven  and  meets  its  Maker  and 
knows  there  are  going  to  be  no  more  misunderstandings 
for  ever,  "how  good  you've  been!" 

And  she  kissed  him  so  fervently  in  a  room  gone  so 
silent  that  the  kiss  sounded  quite  loud. 

The  Bishop  was  nettled. 


74  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

Was  he  then  at  any  time  not  good?  His  daughter's 
excessive  gratitude,  really  almost  noisy  gratitude,  for 
what  after  all  had  been  inevitable,  the  permission  to 
go  up  to  London  and  place  herself  in  the  hands  of  a 
dentist,  suggested  that  humaneness  on  his  part  came 
to  her  as  a  surprise.  He  did  feel  he  had  been  good  to 
let  her  go,  but  he  also  felt  he  would  have  been  not 
good  if  he  had  not  let  her  go.  Certainly  Redchester 
opinion  would  have  condemned  him  as  cruel  even  if  he 
himself,  who  knew  all  the  circumstances,  was  not  able 
to  think  so.  What  had  really  been  cruel  was  the 
terrible  muddle  his  papers  and  letters  had  got  into 
owing  to  her  prolonged  absence.  Grave  dislocations 
had  taken  place  in  the  joints  of  his  engagements,  several 
with  far-reaching  results;  and  all  because,  he  could  not 
help  feeling,  Ingeborg,  in  spite  of  precept  and  example, 
did  not  in  her  earlier  years  use  her  toothbrush  with 
regularity  and  conscientiousness.  Manifestly  she  did 
not,  or  how  could  she  have  needed  nine  enormous  days 
to  be  set  in  repair?  He  himself,  who  regarded  his  body 
as  a  holy  temple,  which  was  the  one  solution  of  the 
body  question  that  at  all  approached  satisfactoriness, 
and  had  accordingly  brushed  his  teeth,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  their  being  pillars  of  a  sacred  edifice,  after 
every  meal  for  forty  years,  had  never  had  a  toothache 
in  his  life. 

"Let  us  hope  now,  Ingeborg,"  he  said,  reflecting  on 
the  instance  she  had  provided  of  the  modern  inversion 
of  the  Mosaic  law  which  visited  the  sins  of  the  fathers 
on  the  children,  the  original  arrangement,  the  Bishop 
felt,  being  considerably  healthier,  and  gently  putting 
her  away  in  order  to  go  over  to  the  tea-table  where  he 
stood  holding  out  his  hand  for  the  cup  Judith  hastened 
to  place  in  it,  "let  us  now  hope,  now  you  have  had 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  75 

your  lesson,  that  in  future  you  will  remember  cleanli- 
ness is  next  to  godliness." 

And  this  seemed  to  Ingeborg  an  answer  so  surpris- 
ing that  she  could  only  stare  at  him  with  her  mouth 
fallen  a  little  open,  there  where  he  had  left  her  in  the 
middle  of  the  carpet. 

But  the  Bishop  had  not  done.  He  went  on  to  say 
another  thing  that  surprised  her  still  more;  nay,  smote 
her  cold,  shook  her  to  her  foundations.  He  said,  after 
a  pause  during  which  the  silence  in  the  room  was  re- 
markable, his  back  turned  to  her  while  at  the  tea-table 
he  carefully  selected  the  particular  piece  of  bread  and 
butter  he  intended  to  eat,  "And  pray,  Ingeborg,  why 
did  you  not  write  the  moment  you  heard  from  us,  and 
congratulate  your  sister  on  her  engagement?" 


CHAPTER  VIII 

1NGEB0RG  was  dumb. 
Her  father's  question  was  like  a  blow,  shocking 
her  back  to  consciousness.  The  warm  dream  that 
all  was  well,  that  she  was  understood,  that  there  was  love 
and  kindliness  for  her  at  home  after  all  and  welcome 
and  encouragement,  the  warm  feeling  of  stretching  her- 
self in  her  family's  kind  lap,  confident  that  it  would 
hold  her  up  and  not  spill  her  out  on  to  the  floor,  was 
gone  in  a  flash.  She  was  hit  awake,  hit  out  of  her  brief 
delicious  sleep.  Her  family  had  not  got  a  lap,  but 
it  had  an  entirely  unprepared  mind,  and  into  that  un- 
prepared mind  she  had  tumbled  the  name  of  Dremmel. 

"Judith — engaged?"  she  stammered  faintly,  on  the 
Bishop's  wheeling  round,  cup  in  hand,  to  examine  into 
the  cause  of  her  prolonged  silence. 

"Your  incredulity  is  not  very  flattering  to  your 
sister,"  he  said;  and  Judith's  eyelashes  as  she  concen- 
trated her  gaze  on  the  teapot  were  alone  sufficiently 
lovely,  the  curved,  dusky-golden  soft  things,  to  make 
incredulity  simply  silly. 

Mrs.  Bullivant  avoided  all  speech  and  clung  to  her 
sofa. 

"It's— so  sudden,"  faltered  Ingeborg. 

"Much  may  happen  in  a  week,"  said  the  Bishop. 

"Yes,"  murmured  Ingeborg,  who  knew  that  terribly, 

too. 

"We  never  can  tell  what  a  day  may  bring  forth," 

76 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  77 

said  the  Bishop;  and  Ingeborg,  deeply  convinced, 
drooped  her  head  acquiescent. 

"No  man,"  began  the  Bishop,  habit  being  strong 
within  him,  "knoweth  the  hour  when  the  bride- 
groom  "  But  he  stopped,  recollecting  that  Inge- 
borg was  not  engaged  and  therefore  could  not  with 
propriety  be  talked  to  of  bridegrooms.  Instead,  he 
inquired  again  why  she  had  not  written;  and  eyeing 
her  searchingly  asked  himself  if  it  were  possible  that  a 
child  of  his  could  be  base  enough  to  envy. 

"I — didn't  get  the  letters,"  said  Ingeborg,  her  head 
drooping. 

'You  did  not?  That  is  very  strange.  Your  mother 
wrote  at  once.  Let  me  see.  It  was  on  Friday  it  hap- 
pened. It  was  Friday,  was  it  not,  Judith?  You 
ought  to  know" — Judith  blushed  obediently — "and 
to-day  is  Tuesday.  Ample  time.  Ample  time.  My 
dear,"  he  said,  turning  to  his  wife  who  at  once  twitched 
into  a  condition  of  yet  further  relaxed  defenceless- 
ness,  "do  you  think  it  possible  your  letter  was  not 
posted?" 

"Quite,  Herbert,"  murmured  Mrs.  Bullivant,  clos- 
ing her  eyes  and  endeavouring  to  imagine  herself  un- 
conscious. 

"Ah.  Then  that's  it.  That's  it.  Wilson  is  grow- 
ing careless.  This  last  week  there  have  been  repeated 
negligences.  You  will  make  inquiries,  Ingeborg,  and 
tell  him  what  I  have  said." 

"Yes,  father." 

"And  you  will  discharge  him  if  he  goes  on  like  this." 

"Yes,  father." 

"Unfaithful  servant.  Unfaithful  servant.  He  that 
is  unfaithful  in  a  few  things " 

The  Bishop,  frowning  at  it,  took  a  second  piece  of 


78  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

bread  and  butter,  and  went  over  to  the  hearthrug, 
where  he  stood  from  force  of  habit,  in  spite  of  the 
warmth  of  the  day,  drinking  his  tea,  and  becoming 
vaguely  and  increasingly  irritated  by  the  action  of  the 
fire  behind  him. 

"Then,"  he  said,  looking  at  Ingeborg,  "you  know 
nothing  about  it?" 

She  shook  her  head.  She  was  the  oddest  figure  in 
the  middle  of  the  splendid  old  room,  travel-stained, 
untidy,  her  face  white  with  fatigue,  her  hat  crooked. 

Judith  glanced  at  her  every  now  and  then,  but  it 
was  impossible  at  any  time  to  tell  what  the  delicate 
white  rose  at  the  tea-table  was  thinking;  so  impossible 
that  the  young  men  who  clustered  round  her  like  bees 
when  they  first  saw  her  gave  it  up  and  went  on  pres- 
ently to  more  communicative  flowers.  The  local 
Duchess  had  hoped  her  first-born  would  marry  her — a 
creature  so  lovely,  so  entirely  respectable  with  that 
nice  Bishop  for  a  father,  and  so  happily  adapted  in  the 
perfection  of  her  proportions  for  the  successful  produc- 
tion of  further  dukes;  and  she  pointed  out  various 
aspects  of  the  girl's  exquisiteness  to  her  son,  and  told 
him  he  would  have  the  most  beautiful  wife  in  England. 
But  the  young  man,  after  a  reproachful  look  at  his 
mother  for  supposing  he  could  have  missed  noticing 
even  the  humblest  approach  to  a  pretty  woman  let 
alone  Judith  Bullivant,  said  he  didn't  want  to  marry 
a  picture  but  something  that  was  alive  and,  anyhow, 
something  that  talked. 

"She's  right  enough,  of  course,"  he  remarked,  "and 
I  like  looking  at  her.  I'd  be  blind  if  I  didn't.  But 
Lord,  dull?  The  girl  hasn't  got  a  word  to  say  for  her- 
self. I  never  met  any  woman  who  looked  so  ripping 
and  then  somehow  wasn't.    She  won't  talk.    She  won't 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  79 

talk,"  he  almost  wailed.     "She  ain't  got  the  remotest 
resemblance  to  anything  approaching  kick  in  her." 

"You  might  end  by  being  thankful  for  that,"  said 
his  mother. 

He  would  not,  however,  be  persuaded,  and  went  his 
way  and  married,  as  the  Duchess  had  feared,  a  young 
lady  from  the  halls — a  young  lady  nimble  not  only  of 
toes  but  of  wits,  nimble,  that  is  to  say,  as  he  proudly 
pointed  out  to  his  mother,  at  both  ends,  with  whom  he 
lived  in  great  contentment,  for  she  amused  him,  which 
is  much. 

"I  have  not  observed  you  offer  any  congratulations, 
Ingeborg,"  said  the  Bishop,  becoming  more  and  more 
displeased  by  her  strange  behaviour,  and  not  at  all 
liking  her  crumpled  and  forlorn  appearance.  He  again 
thought  of  envy,  but  that  alone  could  not  crumple 
clothes.  "And  yet  your  sister,"  he  said,  getting  a 
little  further  away  from  the  fire  which  had  begun  to 
scorch  him  unpleasantly,  "is  to  be  the  wife  of  the 
Master." 

"The  Master?"  repeated  Ingeborg,  stupidly.  For 
a  moment  her  tormented  brain  supposed  Judith  must  be 
going  to  be  a  nun. 

"There  is  only  one  Master,"  said  the  Bishop,  in 
his  stateliest  manner.  "Everybody  knows  that.  The 
Master  of  Ananias." 

Ingeborg  knew  this  was  a  great  thing.  The  Master 
of  Ananias,  the  most  celebrated  of  Oxford  colleges, 
was  in  every  way,  except  perhaps  that  of  age,  desirable ; 
but  what  was  age  when  it  came  to  all  the  other  desir- 
abilities? Her  father  had  rebuked  her  once  for  speaking 
of  him  as  old  Dr.  Abbot,  and  had  informed  her  the 
Master  was  only  sixty,  and  that  everybody  was  sixty- 
that  is,  said  the  Bishop,  everybody  of  any  sense.    He 


80  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

was  not  a  widower,  he  was  pleasant  to  look  at  in  a 
shaven  iron-grey  way,  he  was  brilliantly  erudite,  and 
extremely  well  off  apart  from  his  handsome  salary,  one 
of  the  handsomest  salaries  in  the  gift  of  the  Crown. 
Several  years  before,  when  Judith  was  still  invisible  in 
a  pinafore,  he  had  stayed  at  the  Palace — it  was  then 
Ingeborg  spoke  of  him  as  old — and  had  been  treated 
by  her  father  with  every  attention  and  respect:  He 
had  on  that  occasion  seemed  glad  to  go.  Now  it  ap- 
peared he  had  been  again,  and  must  have  fallen  im- 
mediately— and  overwhelmingly  in  love  with  Judith 
for  his  short  visit  to  bridge  the  distance  between  a 
first  acquaintance  and  an  engagement.  Who,  however, 
knew  better  than  herself  how  quickly  such  distances 
can  be  bridged? 

She  wanted  to  go  and  kiss  Judith  and  say  sweet 
things  to  her,  but  her  feet  seemed  unable  to  move. 
She  wanted  to  congratulate  everybody  with  all  her 
heart  if  only  they  would  be  kind  and  congratulate 
her  a  little,  too.  For  Judith  had  heard  what  she  said 
before  her  father  came  in,  and  her  mother  had  heard 
it,  and  the  room  was  heavy  with  the  uttered  name  of 
Dremmel. 

She  looked  round  at  them  —  her  father  waiting  for 
her  to  show  at  least  ordinary  decency  and  feeling, 
Judith  so  safe  in  the  family's  approval,  so  entirely  clear 
from  hidden  things,  her  mother  lying  with  closed  eyes 
and  expressionless  face,  and  she  suddenly  felt  intoler- 
ably alone. 

"Oh,  oh "    she  cried,    holding   out   her   hands, 

"'doesn't  anybody  love  me?" 

This  was  worse  than  her  toothache. 

Her  family  had  endured  much  during  those  days, 
but  at  least  there  was  a  reason  then  for  the  odder  parts 


"But     father,  Vve  been  doing  it  too" 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  81 

of  her  behaviour.  Now  they  were  called  upon  to  endure 
the  distressing  spectacle  of  a  hitherto  reserved  relative 
letting  herself  go  to  unbridledness.  Ingeborg  was  going 
to  make  a  scene;  and  a  scene  was  a  thing  that  had  never 
yet,  anyhow  not  during  the  entire  Bullivant  period,  been 
made  in  that  house. 

Mrs.  Bullivant  shut  her  eyes  tighter  and  tried  to 
think  she  was  not  there  at  all. 

Judith  turned  red  and  again  became  absorbed  in  the 
teapot. 

The  Bishop,  after  the  first  cold  shock  natural  to  a 
person  called  upon  to  contemplate  nakedness  where 
up  to  then  there  had  been  clothes,  put  down  his  cup 
on  the  nearest  table  and,  with  an  exaggerated  calm, 
stared. 

They  all  felt  intensely  uncomfortable;  as  uncomfort- 
able as  though  she  had  begun,  in  the  middle  of  the 
drawing-room,  to  remove  her  garments  one  by  one  and 
cast  them  from  her. 

'This  is  very  sad,  Ingeborg,"  said  the  Bishop. 

"Isn't    it — oh,    isn't    it "    was    her    unexpected 

answer,  tears  in  her  eyes.  She  was  so  tired,  so  fright- 
ened. She  had  been  travelling  hard  since  the  morning 
of  the  day  before.  She  had  had  nothing  to  eat  for  a 
time  that  seemed  infinite.  And  yet  this  was  the  moment, 
just  because  she  had  betrayed  herself  to  her  mother 
and  Judith,  in  which  she  was  going  to  have  to  tell  her 
father  what  she  had  done. 

"It  is  the  most  distressing  example,"  said  the  Bishop, 
"I  have  ever  seen  of  that  basest  of  sins,  envy." 

"Envy?"  said  Ingeborg.  "Oh,  no — that's  not  what 
it  is.  Oh,  if  it  were  only  that!  And  I  do  congratulate 
Judith.  Judith,  I  do,  I  do,  my  dear.  But — father, 
I've  been  doing  it  too." 


82  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

It  was  out  now,  and  she  looked  at  him  with  miser- 
able eyes,  prepared  for  the  worst. 

"Doing  what,  Ingeborg?" 

"I'm  engaged,  too." 

"Engaged?     My  dear  Ingeborg." 

The  Bishop  was  alarmed  for  her  sanity.  She  really 
looked  very  strange.  Had  they  been  giving  her  too 
much  gas? 

His  tone  became  careful  and  humouring.  "How 
can  you,"  he  said  quietly,  "have  become  engaged  in 
these  few  days?" 

"Much  may  happen  in  a  week,"  said  Ingeborg.  It 
jumped  out.  She  did  try  not  to  say  it.  She  was  un- 
nerved. And  always  when  she  was  unnerved  she  said 
the  first  thing  that  came  into  her  head,  and  always  it 
was  either  unfortunate  or  devastating. 

The  Bishop  became  encased  in  ice.  This  was  not 
hysteria,  it  was  something  immeasurably  worse. 

"Be  so  good  as  to  explain,"  he  said  sharply,  and 
waves  of  icy  air  seemed  to  issue  from  where  he  stood 
and  heave  through  the  room. 

"I'm  engaged  to— to  somebody  called  Dremmel," 
said  Ingeborg. 

"I  do  not  know  the  name.    Do  you,  Marion?" 

"No,  oh,  no,"  breathed  Mrs.  Bullivant,  her  eyes 
shut. 

"Robert  Dremmel,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"Who  are  the  Dremmels,  Ingeborg?" 

"There  aren't  any." 

"There  aren't  any?" 

"I — never  heard  of  any,"  she  said,  twisting  her 
fingers  together.  "We  usedn't  to  talk  about — about 
things  like  more  Dremmels." 

"What  is  this  man?" 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  83 

"A  clergyman." 

"Oh.     Where  is  he  living?" 

"In  East  Prussia." 

"In  where,  Ingeborg?" 

"East  Prussia.    It — it's  a  place  abroad." 

"Thank  you.  I  am  aware  of  that.  My  education 
reaches  as  far  as  and  includes  East  Prussia." 

Mrs.  Bullivant  began  to  cry.  Not  loud,  but  tears 
that  stole  quietly  down  her  face  from  beneath  her 
closed  eyelids.  She  did  not  do  anything  to  them,  but 
lay  with  her  hands  clasped  on  her  breast  and  let  them 
steal.  What  was  the  use  of  being  a  Christian  if  one 
were  exposed  to  these  scenes? 

"Pray,  why  is  he  in  East  Prussia? "  asked  the  Bishop. 

"He  belongs  there." 

Again  the  room  seemed  for  an  instant  to  hold  its 
breath. 

"Am  I  to  understand  that  he  is  a  German?" 

"Please,  father." 

"A  German  pastor?" 

"Yes,  father." 

"Not  by  any  chance  attached  in  some  ecclesiastical 
capacity  to  the  Kaiser?" 

"No,  father." 

There  was  a  pause. 

"Your  aunt — what  did  she  say  to  this?" 

"She  didn't  say  anything.      She  wasn't  there." 

"I  beg  your  pardon?" 

"I  haven't  been  at  my  aunt's." 

"Judith,  my  dear,  will  you  kindly  leave  the  room?" 

Judith  got  up  and  went.  While  she  was  crossing  to 
the  door  and  until  she  had  shut  it  behind  her  there  was 
silence. 

"Now,"  said  the  Bishop,  Judith  being  safely  out  of 


84  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

harm's  way,  "you  will  have  the  goodness  to  explain 
exactly  what  you  have  been  doing." 

"I  think  I  wish  to  go  to  bed,"  murmured  Mrs.  Bulli- 
vant,  without  changing  her  attitude  or  opening  her 
eyes.  "Will  some  one  please  ring  for  Richards  to  come 
and  take  me  to  bed?" 

But  neither  the  Bishop  nor  Ingeborg  heeded  her. 

"I  didn't  mean  to  do  anything,  father "  began 

Ingeborg.  Then  she  broke  off  and  said,  "I — can  ex- 
plain better  if  I  sit  down "  and  dropped  into  the 

chair  nearest  to  her,  for  her  knees  felt  very  odd. 

She  saw  her  father  now  only  through  a  mist.  She 
was  going  to  have  to  oppose  him  for  the  first  time  in 
her  life,  and  her  nature  was  one  which  acquiesced  and 
did  not  oppose.  In  her  wretchedness  a  doubt  stole 
across  her  mind  as  to  whether  Herr  Dremmel  was 
worth  this;  was  anything,  in  fact,  worth  fighting  about? 
And  with  one's  father.  And  against  one's  whole  bring- 
ing-up.  Was  she  going  to  be  strong  enough?  Was  it 
a  thing  one  ought  to  be  strong  about?  Would  not  true 
strength  rather  lie  in  a  calm  continuation  of  life  at  home? 
What,  when  one  came  to  think  of  it,  was  East  Prussia 
really  to  her,  and  those  rye-fields  and  all  that  water? 
She  wished  she  had  had  at  least  a  piece  of  bread  and 
butter.  She  thought  perhaps  bread  and  butter  would 
have  helped  her  not  to  doubt.  She  looked  round  vaguely 
so  as  not  to  have  to  meet  her  father's  eye  for  a  moment 
and  her  glance  fell  on  the  tea-table. 

"I  think,"  she  said  faintly,  getting  up  again,  "I'll 
have  some  tea." 

To  the  Bishop  this  seemed  outrageous. 

He  watched  her  in  a  condition  of  icy  indignation 
such  as  he  had  not  yet  in  his  life  experienced.  His 
daughter.     His  daughter  for  whom  he  had  done  so 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  85 

much.  The  daughter  he  had  trained  for  years,  sparing 
no  pains,  to  be  a  helpful,  efficient,  Christian  woman. 
The  daughter  he  had  honoured  with  his  trust,  letting 
her  share  in  the  most  private  portions  of  his  daily 
business.  Not  a  letter  had  he  received  that  she  had 
not  seen  and  been  allowed  to  answer.  Not  a  step  in 
any  direction  had  he  taken  without  permitting  her  to 
make  the  necessary  arrangements.  Seldom,  he  sup- 
posed bitterly,  had  a  child  received  so  much  of  a 
father's  confidence.  His  daughter.  That  crumpled 
and  disreputable — yes,  now  he  knew  what  was  the 
matter  with  her  appearance — disreputable-looking  fig- 
ure cynically  pouring  itself  out  tea  while  he,  her 
father  whom  she  had  been  deceiving,  was  left  to  wait 
for  her  explanations  until  such  time  as  she  should  have 
sated  her  appetite.  Positively  she  had  succeeded,  he 
said  to  himself,  bitterly  enraged  that  he  should  be 
forced  to  be  bitterly  enraged,  in  making  him  feel  less 
like  a  bishop  should  feel  than  he  had  done  since  he  was 
a  boy. 

"It's  because  I've  had  nothing  to  eat  since  Paris," 
Ingeborg  explained  apologetically,  holding  the  teapot 
in  both  hands  because  one  by  itself  shook  too  much, 
and  feeling,  too,  that  the  moment  was  not  exactly  one 
for  tea. 

The  Bishop  started.     "Since  where?"  he  said. 

"Paris,"  said  Ingeborg;  adding  tremulously,  having 
quite  lost  her  nerve  and  only  desiring  to  fill  up  the 
silence,  "it — it's  a  place  abroad." 

Mrs.  Bullivant  murmured  a  more  definitely  earnest 
request  that  Richards  might  be  rung  for  to  take  her  to 
bed. 

"Ingeborg,"  said  the  Bishop  in  a  voice  she  did  not 
know.     "Paris?" 


86  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"Yes,  father — last  night." 

"Ingeborg,  come  here." 

He  was  pointing  to  a  chair  a  yard  or  two  from  the 
hearthrug  on  which  he  stood,  and  his  voice  was  very 
strange. 

She  put  down  the  cup  with  a  shaking  hand  and  went 
to  him.    Her  heart  was  in  her  mouth. 

"What  have  you  been  doing?"  he  said. 

"I  told  you,  father.     I'm  engaged  to  Herr " 

"How  did  you  get  to  Paris?" 

"By  train." 

"Will  you  answer  me?  What  were  you  doing  in 
Paris?" 

"Having  dinner." 

She  was  terrified.  Her  father  was  talking  quite 
loud.  She  had  never  in  her  life  seen  him  like  this. 
She  answered  his  questions  quickly,  her  heart  leaping 
as  he  rapped  them  out,  but  her  answers  seemed  to 
make  him  still  angrier.  If  only  he  would  let  her  ex- 
plain, hear  her  out;  but  he  hurled  questions  at  her, 
giving  her  no  time  at  all. 

"Father,"  she  said  hurriedly,  seeing  that  after  that 
last  answer  of  hers  he  did  for  a  moment  say  nothing, 
but  stood  looking  at  her  very  extraordinarily,  "please 
let  me  tell  you  how  it  all  happened.  It  won't  take  a 
minute — it  won't  really.  And  then,  you  see,  you'll 
know.  I  didn't  mean  to  do  anything,  I  really  didn't; 
but  the  dentist  pulled  my  tooth  out  so  quickly,  that 
very  first  day,  and  so  instead  of  coming  home  I  went 
to  Lucerne " 

"To " 

"Yes,"  she  nodded,  in  a  frenzy  of  haste  to  get   it 
all  said,  "to  Lucerne — I  couldn't  tell  you  why,  but  ] 
did — I  seemed  pushed  there,  and  after  a  little  while  I 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  87 

got  engaged,  and  I  didn't  in  the  least  mean  to  do  that, 

either,  really  I  didn't — but  somehow "     Was  there 

any  use  trying  to  tell  him  about  the  white  and  silver 
cake  and  the  seven  witnesses  and  the  undoubting  kind 
Herr  Dremmel  and  all  the  endless  small  links  in  the 
chain?  Would  he  ever,  ever  understand? — "some- 
how I  did.  You  see,"  she  added  helplessly,  looking 
up  at  him  with  eyes  full  of  an  appeal  for  comprehen- 
sion, for  mercy,  "one  thing  leads  to  another."  And 
as  he  still  said  nothing  she  added,  even  more  helplessly, 
"Herr  Dremmel  sat  opposite  me  in  the  train." 

"You  picked  him  up  casually,  like  any  servant  girl, 
in  a  train?" 

"He  was  one  of  the  party.  He  was  there  from  the 
beginning.  Oh,  yes,  I  forgot  to  tell  you — it  was  one  of 
Dent's  Tours." 

"You  went  on  a  Dent's  Tour?" 

"Yes,  and  he  was  one  of  it,  too,  and  we  all,  of  course, 
always  went  about  together,  rather  like  a  school,  two 
and  two — I  suppose  because  of  the  pavement,"  she 
said,  now  saying  in  her  terror  anything  that  came  into 
her  head,  "and  as  he  was  the  other  one  of  my  two — 
the  half  of  the  couple  I  was  the  other  one  of,  you  know, 
father — we — we  got  engaged." 

"Do  you  take  me  for  a  fool?"  was  the  Bishop's 
comment. 

Ingeborg's  heart  stood  still.  How  could  her  father 
even  think 


"Oh,  father,"  was  all  she  could  say  to  that;  and  she 
hung  her  head  in  the  entire  hopelessness,  the  useless- 
ness  of  trying  to  tell  him  anything. 

She  knew  she  had  been  saying  it  ridiculously,  tum- 
bling out  a  confusion  of  what  must  sound  sad  nonsense, 
but  could  he  not  see  she  was  panic-stricken?     Could 


88  THE  PASTOR'S   WIFE 

he  not  be  patient,  and  help  her  to  make  her  clean 
breast? 

"I'm  stupid,"  she  said,  looking  up  at  him  through 
tears,  and  suddenly  dropping  into  a  kind  of  nakedness 
of  speech,  a  speech  entirely  simple  and  entirely  true, 
"stupid  with  fright." 

"Do  you  suggest  I  terrorize  you?"  inquired  the  in- 
censed Bishop. 

"Yes,"  she  said. 

This  was  terrible.  And  it  was  peculiarly  terrible 
because  it  made  the  Bishop  actually  wish  he  were  not 
a  gentleman.  Then,  indeed,  it  would  be  an  easy  matter 
to  deal  with  that  small  defying  creature  in  the  chair. 
When  it  comes  to  women  the  quickest  method  is,  after 
all,  to  be  by  profession  a  navvy.    .    .    . 

He  shuddered,  and  hastily  drew  his  thoughts  back 
from  this  abyss.  To  what  dread  depths  of  naturalness 
was  she  not  by  her  conduct  dragging  him? 

"Father,"  said  Ingeborg,  who  had  now  got  down  to 
the  very  bottom  of  the  very  worst,  a  place  where  once 
one  has  reached  it  an  awful  sincerity  takes  possession 
of  one's  tongue,  "do  you  see  this?     Look  at  them." 

And  she  held  up  her  hands  and  showed  him,  while 
she  herself  watched  them  as  though  they  were  some- 
body else's,  how  they  were  shaking. 

"Isn't  that  being  afraid?  Look  at  them.  It's  fear. 
It's  fear  of  you.  It's  you  making  them  do  that.  And 
think  of  it — I'm  twenty -two.  A  woman.  Oh,  I — I'm 
ashamed " 

But  whether  it  was  a  proper  shame  for  what  she 
had  done  or  a  shocking  shame  for  her  compunctions  in 
sinning,  the  Bishop  was  not  permitted  that  afternoon 
to  discover;  because  when  she  had  got  as  far  as  that 
she  was  interrupted  by  being  obliged  to  faint. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  89 

There  was  a  moment's  confusion  while  she  tumbled 
out  of  the  chair  and  lay,  a  creased,  strange  object,  on 
the  floor,  owing  to  Mrs.  Bullivant's  having  produced 
an  exclamation;  and  this  to  the  Bishop,  after  years  of 
not  having  heard  her  more  than  murmur,  was  almost 
as  disconcerting  as  if,  flinging  self-restraint  to  the 
winds,  she  had  suddenly  produced  fresh  offspring.  He 
quickly,  however,  recovered  the  necessary  presence  of 
mind  and  the  bell  was  rung  for  Richards;  who,  when 
she  came,  knelt  down  and  undid  Ingeborg's  travel- 
worn  blouse,  and  something  on  a  long  chain  fell  out 
jingling. 

It  was  her  father's  cross  and  Herr  Dremmel's  ring 
metallically  hitting  each  other. 

The  Bishop  left  the  room  without  a  word. 


CHAPTER  IX 

A  PALL  descended  on  the  Palace  and  enveloped 
it  blackly  for  four  awful  days,  during  which 
Mrs.  Bullivant  and  her  daughters  and  the 
chaplain  and  the  secretary  and  all  the  servants  did 
not  so  much  live  as  feel  their  way  about  with  a  careful 
solicitude  for  inconspicuousness. 

This  pall  was  the  pall  of  the  Bishop's  wrath;  and 
there  was  so  much  of  it  that  it  actually  reached  over 
into  the  dwellings  of  the  Dean  and  Chapter  and  black- 
ened those  white  spots,  and  it  got  into  the  hitherto 
calm  home  of  the  Mayor,  who  had  the  misfortune  to 
have  business  with  the  Bishop  the  very  day  after  Inge- 
borg's  return,  and  an  edge  of  it — but  quite  enough  to 
choke  an  old  man — even  invaded  the  cathedral,  where 
it  extinguished  the  head  verger,  a  sunny  octogenarian 
privileged  to  have  his  little  joke  with  the  Bishop,  and 
who  had  it  unfortunately  as  usual,  and  was  instantly 
muffled  in  murkiness  and  never  joked  again. 

That  the  Bishop  should  have  allowed  his  private 
angers  to  overflow  beyond  his  garden  walls,  he  who  had 
never  been  anything  in  public  but  a  pattern  in  his 
personal  beauty,  his  lofty  calm,  and  his  biblically 
flavoured  eloquence  of  what  the  perfect  bishop  should 
be,  shows  the  extreme  disturbance  of  his  mind.  But  it 
was  not  that  he  allowed  it:  it  was  that  he  could  not 
help  it.     He  had,  thanks  to  his  daughter,  lost  his  self- 

90 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  91 

control,  and  for  that  alone,  without  anything  else  she 
had  done,  he  felt  he  could  never  forgive  her. 

Self-control  gone,  and  with  it  self-respect.  He 
ached,  he  positively  ached  during  those  first  four  black 
days  in  which  his  natural  man  was  uppermost,  a  crea- 
ture he  had  forgotten  so  long  was  it  since  he  had  heard 
of  him,  thoroughly  to  shake  his  daughter.  And  the 
terribleness  of  that  in  a  bishop.  The  terribleness  of 
being  aware  that  his  hands  were  twitching  to  shake — 
hands  which  he  acutely  knew  should  be  laid  on  no  one 
except  in  blessing,  consecrated  hands,  divinely  ap- 
pointed to  bless  and  then  dismiss  in  peace.  That 
small  unimportant  thing,  that  small  weak  thing,  the 
thing  he  had  generously  endowed  with  the  great  gift  of 
life  and  along  with  that  gift  the  chance  it  would  never 
have  had  except  for  him  of  re-entering  eternal  blessed- 
ness, the  thing  he  had  fed  and  clothed,  that  had  eaten 
out  of  his  hand  and  been  all  bright  tameness — to  bring 
disgrace  on  him!  Disgrace  outside  before  the  world, 
and  inside  before  his  abased  and  humiliated  self.  And 
she  had  brought  it  not  only  on  a  father,  but  on  the 
best-known  bishop  on  the  bench;  the  best  known  also 
and  most  frequently  mentioned,  he  had  sometimes 
surmised  with  a  kind  of  high  humility,  in  the — how 
could  one  put  it  with  sufficient  reverence? — holy  gossip 
of  the  angels.  For  in  his  highest  moods  he  had  humbly 
dared  to  believe  he  was  not  altogether  untalked  about 
in  heaven.  And  here  at  the  moment  of  much  thank- 
fulness and  legitimate  pride  when  his  other  daughter 
was  so  beautifully  betrothed  came  this  one,  and  with 
impish  sacrilegiousness  dragged  him,  her  father,  into 
the  dust  of  base  and  furious  instincts,  the  awful  dust 
in  which  those  sad  animal  men  sit  who  wish  to  and  do 
beat  their  women-folk. 


92  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

He  could  not  bring  himself  to  speak  to  her.  He 
would  not  allow  her  near  him.  Whatever  her  re- 
pentance might  be  it  could  never  wipe  out  the  memory 
of  these  hours  of  being  forced  by  her  to  recognise  what, 
after  all  the  years  of  careful  climbing  upwards  to  good- 
ness, he  was  still  really  like  inside.  Terrible  to  be 
stirred  not  only  to  unchristianity  but  to  vulgarity. 
Terrible  to  be  made  to  wish  not  only  that  you  were  not 
a  Christian  but  not  a  gentleman.  He,  a  prince  of  the 
Church,  was  desiring  to  be  a  navvy  for  a  space  during 
which  he  could  be  unconditionally  active.  He,  a  prince 
of  the  Church,  was  rent  and  distorted  by  feelings  that 
would  have  disgraced  a  curate.  He  could  never  for- 
give her. 

But  the  darkest  hours  pass,  and  just  as  the  con- 
cerned diocese  was  beginning  to  fear  appendicitis  for 
him,  unable  in  any  other  way  to  account  for  the  way 
he  remained  invisible,  he  emerged  from  his  first  indig- 
nation into  a  chillier  region  in  which,  still  much  locked 
in  his  chamber,  he  sought  an  outlet  in  prayer. 

A  bishop,  and  indeed  any  truly  good  and  public 
man,  is  restricted  in  his  outlets.  He  can  with  propriety 
have  only  two — prayer  and  his  wife;  and  in  this  case 
the  wife  was  unavailable  because  of  her  sofa.  For  the 
first  time  the  Bishop  definitely  resented  the  sofa.  He 
told  himself  that  the  wife  of  a  prelate,  however  ailing 
— and  he  believed  with  a  man's  simplicity  on  such 
points  that  she  did  ail — had  no  business  to  be  in- 
accessible to  real  conversation.  With  no  one  else  on 
earth  except  his  wife  can  a  prelate  or  any  other  truly 
good  and  public  man  have  real  conversation  without 
losing  dignity,  or,  if  the  conversation  should  become  very 
real,  without  losing  office.  That  is  why  most  prelates 
are  married.     The  best  men  wish  to  be  real  at  times. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  93 

When  Ingeborg  stripped  off  her  deferences,  and, 
after  having  most  scandalously  run  away  and  most 
scandalously  entangled  herself  with  an  alien  clerical 
rogue,  had  the  face  to  hold  up  her  hands  at  him  and 
accuse  him,  accuse  him,  her  father,  of  being  the  cause  of 
their  shaking,  the  Bishop  had  been  as  much  horrified  as 
if  his  own  garden  path  on  which  he  had  trodden  pleas- 
antly for  years  had  rent  itself  asunder  at  his  feet  and 
gaped  at  him.  He  had  made  the  path;  he  had  paid  to 
have  it  tidied  and  adorned;  and  he  required  of  it  in 
return  that  it  should  keep  quiet  and  be  useful.  To  have 
it  convulsed  into  an  earthquake  and  its  usefulness  inter- 
rupted must  be  somebody's  fault,  and  his  instinct  very 
properly  was  to  go  to  his  wife  and  tell  her  it  was  hers. 

But  there  was  the  sofa. 

He  desired  to  converse  with  his  wife.  He  had  an 
intolerable  desire  for  even  as  few  as  five  minutes'  real 
conversation  with  her.  He  wanted  to  talk  about  the 
manner  in  which  Ingeborg  must  have  been  brought  up, 
about  the  amount  of  punishment  she  had  received  in 
childhood;  he  wished  to  be  informed  as  to  the  exact 
nature  of  the  participation  her  mother  had  taken  in 
her  moral  education;  he  wished  to  discuss  the  responsi- 
bility of  mothers,  and  to  explain  his  views  on  the  con- 
sequences of  maternal  neglect;  and  he  wanted,  too,  to 
draw  his  wife's  attention  to  the  fact  she  easily  ap- 
parently overlooked,  that  he  had  bestowed  a  name 
grown  celebrated  on  her,  and  a  roof  that  through  his 
gifts  and  God's  mercy  was  not  an  ordinary  but  a  palace 
roof,  and  that  in  return  the  least  he  might  expect. 
In  short,  he  wanted  to  talk. 

But  when  driven  by  his  urgencies  he  went  to  her 
room  to  break  down  the  barricade  of  the  sofa,  he  found 
not  only  Richards  hovering  there  tactfully,   but  the 


94  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

doctor;  for  Mrs.  Bullivant  had  foreseen  her  husband's 
probable  desire  for  conversation,  and  the  doctor,  a  well- 
trained  man,  was  in  the  act  of  prescribing  complete 
silence. 

It  was  then  that,  thwarted  and  debarred  from  the 
outlet  a  man  prefers,  he  sought  his  other  outlet,  and 
laid  all  these  distressful  matters  in  prayer  at  the  feet 
of  heaven.  On  his  knees  in  his  chamber  he  earnestly 
begged  forgiveness  for  his  descent  to  naturalness, 
and  a  restoration  of  his  self-respect.  Without  his 
self-respect  what  would  become  of  him?  He  had 
lived  with  it  so  intimately  and  long.  Fervently  he 
desired  the  molten  moments  in  which  his  hands  had 
twitched,  wiped  out,  and  forgotten.  He  asked  for  help 
to  conduct  himself  henceforth  with  calm.  He  implored 
to  be  given  patience.  He  implored  to  be  given  self- 
control.  And  presently,  after  two  days  of  his  spare 
moments  spent  in  this  manner,  he  was  sitting  upon  a 
chair  and  telling  himself  that  the  main  objection  to 
praying,  if  one  might  say  so  with  all  due  reverence,  is 
that  it  is  one-sided.  It  is  a  monologue,  said  the  Bishop 
— also  with  all  due  reverence — and  in  troubles  of  the 
kind  he  was  in  one  needs  to  be  sure  one  is  being  at- 
tended to.  He  did  not  think  he  could  possibly  be  being 
attended  to,  because,  pray  as  he  might,  withdraw  and 
wrestle  as  he  might,  he  continued  to  want  to  shake  his 
daughter. 

For  there  was  the  constant  irritation  going  on  of 
the  affairs  of  the  diocese  getting  into  a  more  hopeless 
disorder.  All  that  time  she  was  away  guiltily  gadding, 
and  now  all  this  time  she  was  not  away  but  unavailable 
till  she  should  have  utterly  repented,  his  letters  were 
piling  themselves  up  into  confused  heaps,  and  his 
engagements  were  a  wilderness  in  which  he  wandered 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  95 

alone  in  the  dark.  The  chaplain  and  the  typist  did 
what  they  could,  but  they  had  not  been  with  him  so 
long  as  his  daughter  and  were  not  possessed  of  the 
mechanical  brainlessness  that  makes  a  woman  so  satis- 
factory as  a  secretary.  His  daughter,  not  having  what 
might  be  called  actual  brains,  was  not  troubled  by 
thought.  The  distresses  of  possible  alternatives  did 
not  disturb  her.  She  did  not,  therefore,  disturb  him 
by  suggesting  them.  She  was  mechanically  meticulous. 
She  respected  detail.  She  remembered.  She  knew  not 
only  what  had  to  be  done,  which  was  easy,  but  what 
had  to  be  done  exactly  first.  And  both  the  chaplain 
and  the  typist  were  men  with  ideas,  and  instead  of 
assisting  him  along  one  straight  and  narrow  path  which 
is  the  only  way  of  really  getting  anywhere,  including, 
remembered  the  Bishop,  to  heaven,  they  were  con- 
stantly looking  to  the  right  and  the  left,  doubting, 
weighing,  hesitating.  The  chaplain  had  as  many  eyes 
for  a  question  as  a  fly,  and  saw  it  from  as  many  angles. 
Fairness,  desirability,  the  probable  views  of  the  other 
side,  their  equal  Tightness,  these  things  faltered  inter- 
minably round  each  letter  to  be  answered,  were  hesitated 
over  interminably  in  the  mellow  intonations  of  that 
large-minded,  well-educated  young  man's  voice,  and  he 
was  echoed  and  supported  by  the  typist,  who  was  also 
from  Oxford,  and  had  been  given  this  chance  of  near- 
ness to  the  most  distinguished  of  bishops  at  such  a 
youthful  age  that  the  undergraduate  milk  had  not  yet 
dried  on  the  corners  of  his  eloquent  and  hesitating 
mouth,  and  gave  a  peculiarly  sickly  flavour,  thought 
the  irritated  Bishop,  to  whatever  came  out  of  it. 

The  Bishop  felt  that  if  this  went  on  much  longer 
the  work  of  the  diocese  would  come  to  a  standstill. 
In  ten  days  the  Easter  recess  would  be  over,  and  he 


96  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

was  due  in  the  House  of  Lords,  where  he  had  been  put 
down  for  a  speech  on  the  Home  Rule  Bill  from  the 
point  of  view  of  simple  faith,  and  how  was  he  to  leave 
things  in  this  muddle  at  home,  and  how  was  he  to  have 
the  peace  of  mind,  the  empty  clarity,  appropriate  to  a 
proper  approach  of  the  measure  if  his  inward  eye  went 
roving  away  to  Redchester  all  the  time  and  to  the  in- 
creasing confusion  on  his  study  table? 

The  trail  of  Ingeborg  was  over  all  his  day.  When, 
warm  and  ruffled  from  prayer,  he  plunged  down  into 
his  work  again,  he  could  not  do  a  thing  without  being 
reminded  she  was  not  there.  He  was  forced  to  think 
of  her  every  moment  of  his  time.  It  was  ignoble,  but 
without  her  he  was  like  an  actor  who  has  learned  not 
his  part  but  to  lean  on  the  prompter,  and  who  finds 
himself  on  the  stage  with  the  prompter  gone  dead  in 
his  box.  She  was  dead  to  him,  dead  in  obstinate  sin; 
and  dignity  demanded  she  should  continue  dead  until 
.she  came  of  her  own  accord  and  told  him  she  had  done 
with  that  terrible  affair  of  the  East  Prussian  pastor. 
He  did  not  know  whether  he  would  then  forgive  her — 
he  would  probably  defer  forgiveness  as  a  disciplinary 
measure,  after  having  implored  heaven's  guidance — but 
he  would  allow  a  certain  amount  of  resurrection,  suffi- 
cient to  enable  her  to  sit  up  at  her  desk  every  day  and 
disentangle  the  confusion  her  wickedness  alone  had 
caused.  In  the  evenings  she  would,  he  thought,  at  any 
rate  for  a  time,  be  best  put  back  in  her  grave. 

At  this  point  he  began  to  be  able  to  say  "Poor 
girl,"  and  to  feel  that  he  pitied  her. 

But  it  was  not  till  the  end  of  the  week,  as  Sunday 
drew  near,  that  his  prayers  did  after  all  begin  to  be 
answered,  and  he  regained  enough  control  of  his  words 
if  not  of  his  thoughts  to  be  able  to  reappear  among  his 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  97 

family  and  show  nothing  less  becoming  than  reserve. 
He  even  succeeded,  though  without  speaking  to  her,  in 
kissing  Ingeborg's  forehead  night  and  morning  and 
making  the  sign  of  the  Cross  over  her  when  she  went 
to  bed  as  he  had  done  from  her  earliest  years.  She 
seemed  smaller  than  ever,  hardly  there  at  all,  and  made 
him  think  of  an  empty  dress  walking  about  with  a  head 
on  it.  Contemplating  her  when  she  was  not  looking 
his  desire  to  shake  her  became  finally  quenched  by  the 
perception  that  really  there  would  be  nothing  to  shake. 
It  would  be  like  shaking  out  mere  clothes,  garments 
with  the  body  gone  out  of  them;  there  would  be  dust, 
but  little  satisfaction.  She  had  evidently  been  feeling, 
he  was  slightly  soothed  to  observe,  for  not  only  was 
her  dress  empty  but  her  face  seemed  diminished,  and 
she  certainly  was  remarkably  pale.  She  struck  him  as 
very  unattractive,  entirely  designed  by  Providence  for 
a  happy  home  life.  And  to  think  that  this  nothing, 
this  amazing  littleness — well,  well;  poor  girl. 

On  the  Sunday  afternoon  he  determined  to  help  her 
by  getting  into  touch  with  her  from  the  pulpit.  On 
that  day  he  several  times  assured  himself  before  preach- 
ing that  his  only  feeling  in  the  sad  affair  was  one  of 
concern  for  her  and  grief.  The  pulpit,  he  knew  from 
experience,  was  a  calm  and  comfort-bringing  place  when 
he  was  in  it;  it  was,  indeed,  his  way  with  a  pulpit  that 
had  brought  the  Bishop  to  the  pinnacle  of  the  Church 
on  which  he  found  himself.  He  was  at  his  best  in  it, 
knowing  it  for  a  blessed  spot,  free  from  controversy, 
pure  from  contradiction,  a  place  where  personal  emo- 
tions could  find  no  footing  owing  to  the  wise  custom 
that  prevented  congregations  from  answering  back. 
Put  into  common  terms,  the  terms  of  his  undergraduate 
days,  he  could  let  himself  rip  in  the  pulpit;  and  the 


98  THE  PASTORS  WIFE 

Bishop   was  in  a  ripped   condition   altogether  at  his 
greatest. 

He  spoke  that  Sunday  specially  to  Ingeborg,  and 
he  told  himself  that  what  had  come  straight  from  his 
heart  must  needs  go  straight  to  hers.  The  Bible  was 
very  plain.  It  did  not  mince  matters  as  to  the  dangers 
she  was  running.  The  punishment  for  her  class  of  sin 
right  through  it  was  various  and  severe.  Not  that  the 
ravens  of  another  age  and  the  eagles  of  a  different 
climate — he  had  taken  as  his  text  that  passage,  or 
rather  portion  of  a  passage — he  described  it  as  remark- 
able— in  the  Proverbs:  "The  ravens  of  the  valley  shall 
pick  it  out  and  the  young  eagles  shall  eat  it" — were 
likely  ever  miraculously  to  appear  in  Redchester, 
though  even  on  that  point  the  Bishop  held  that  noth- 
ing was  certain;  but  there  were,  he  explained,  spiritual 
ravens  and  eagles  provided  by  an  all-merciful  Prov- 
idence for  latter-day  requirements  whose  work  was 
even  more  thorough  and  destructive.  He  earnestly 
implored  those  members  of  his  flock  who  knew  them- 
selves guilty  of  the  particular  sin  the  passage  referred 
to,  to  seek  forgiveness  of  their  parents  before  Heaven 
interfered.  He  pointed  out  that  what  is  most  needed, 
if  people  are  to  live  with  any  zest  and  fine  result  at  all, 
is  encouragement,  and  what  encouragement  could  equal 
full  and  free  forgiveness?  The  Bible,  he  said,  under- 
stood this  very  well,  and  the  Prodigal  Son's  father 
never  hesitated  in  his  encouragement.  It  seemed 
difficult  to  suppose  one  could  equal  the  lavishness  of  the 
best  robe,  the  ring,  the  shoes,  and  the  fatted  calf,  yet 
he  felt  certain — he  knew  there  were  fathers  at  that  very 
moment,  there  in  that  town,  nay,  in  that  cathedral, 
ready  with  all  and  more  than  that.  Who  would  wish 
to  punish  his  dear  child,  the  soul  given  into  his  hands 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  99 

to  be  whitened  for  heaven?  One  knew  from  one's  own 
experience — all  who  had  once  been  children  must  know 
— how  sorry  one  was  for  having  done  wrong,  how  bleed- 
ing one  felt  about  it;  and  just  then,  just  at  that  moment 
of  sorrow,  of  heart's  blood,  was  not  what  one  needed 
so  that  one  might  get  on  one's  feet  again  quickly  and 
do  better  than  ever,  not  punishment  but  forgiveness? 
A  frequent  and  free  forgiveness,  said  the  Bishop,  and 
his  voice  was  beautiful  as  he  said  it,  was  one  of  the 
chief  necessities  of  life.  What  poor  children  want, 
poor  frail  children,  so  infinitely  apt  to  fall,  so  infinitely 
clumsy  at  getting  up,  is  a  continual  wiping  out  and 
never  thinking  again  of  the  yesterdays,  a  daily  presen- 
tation by  authority  to  yesterday's  stumblers  of  that 
most  bracing  object,  the  cleaned  and  empty  slate. 
Why,  it  was  as  necessary,  he  declared,  his  fine  face 
aglow,  if  one  was  to  work  well  and  add  one's  cheerful 
contribution  to  the  world's  happiness,  as  a  nourishing 
and  sufficient  breakfast — the  congregation  thrilled  at 
this  homely  touch — and  to  numb  a  human  being's 
powers  of  cheerful  contribution  by  punishment  was 
waste.  How  cruel,  then,  to  force  a  father  by  one's 
stubbornness  to  punish;  how  cruel  and  how  sinful  to 
hinder  him,  by  not  seeking  out  at  once  what  he  so 
freely  offered,  to  hinder  him  from  bringing  forth  his 
best  robe,  his  ring,  his  fatted  calf.  What  a  heavy 
responsibility  towards  their  fathers  did  children  bear, 
said  the  Bishop,  who  had  ceased  himself  being  any- 
body's child  many  years  before.  This,  he  said,  is  a 
sermon  to  children;  to  erring  children;  to  those  sad 
children  who  have  gone  astray.  We  are  all  children 
here,  he  explained,  and  if  life  has  been  with  us  so  long 
that  we  can  no  longer  find  any  one  we  may  still  with 
any  certainty  call  father,  we  arc  yet  to  the  end  Children 


100  THE  PASTORS  WIFE 

of  the  Kingdom.  But,  he  continued,  though  every 
single  soul  in  this  cathedral  is  necessarily  some  one's 
child,  not  every  single  soul  in  it  is  inevitably  some  one's 
father,  and  he  would  say  a  few  words  to  the  fathers 
and  remind  them  of  the  infinite  effect  of  love.  To 
punish  your  child  is  to  make  its  repentance  go  sour 
within  it.  Do  not  punish  it.  Love  it.  Love  it  con- 
tinuously, generously,  if  needs  be  obstinately;  smite 
its  hardness,  as  once  a  rock  was  smitten,  with  the  rod 
of  generosity.  Give  it  a  chance  of  gushing  forth  into 
living  repentance.  Generosity  begets  generosity.  Love 
begets  love.  Show  your  love.  Show  your  generosity. 
Forgive  freely,  magnificently.  Oh,  my  brothers,  oh,  my 
children,  my  little  sorry  children,  what  could  not  one, 
what  would  not  one  do  in  return  for  love? 

The  Bishop's  face  was  lifted  up  as  he  finished  to  the 
light  of  the  west  window.  His  voice  was  charged  with 
feeling.  He  had  forgotten  the  ravens  and  eagles  of  the 
beginning,  for  he  never  allowed  his  beginnings  to  dis- 
turb his  endings,  well  knowing  his  congregation  forgot 
them,  too.  He  was  an  artist  at  reaching  into  the 
hearts  of  the  uneducated.  Everything  helped  him — his 
beauty,  his  voice,  and  the  manifest  way  in  which  his 
own  words  moved  him. 

And  the  typist,  as  he  walked  back  to  the  Palace  with 
the  chaplain  across  the  daisies  of  the  Close,  was  unable 
to  agree  with  the  chaplain  that  a  course  at  Oxford  even 
now  in  close  reasoning  might  help  the  Bishop.  The 
typist  thought  it  would  spoil  him;  and  offered  to  lay 
the  chaplain  twenty  to  one  that  Redchester  that  after- 
noon would  be  full  of  erring  children  upsetting  their 
fathers'  Sunday  by  wanting  to  be  forgiven. 

It  was;  and  Ingeborg  was  one  of  them. 


CHAPTER  X 

SHE  waylaid  him  after  tea  on  the  stairs. 
"Father,"  she  said  timidly,  as  he  was  passing 
on  in  silence. 

'Well,    Ingeborg?"    said   the   Bishop,    pausing   and 
gravely  attentive. 

"I — want  to  tell  you  how  sorry  I  am." 

"Yes,  Ingeborg?" 

"So  sorry,  so  ashamed  that  I — I  went  away  like 
that  on  that  tour.  It  was  very  wrong  of  me.  And  I 
went  with  your  money.  Oh,  it  was  ugly.  I — hope 
you'll  forgive  me,  father?" 

"Freely,  Ingeborg.  It  would  be  sad  indeed  if  I 
lagged  behind  our  Great  Exemplar  in  the  matter  of 
forgiveness." 

"Then — I  may  come  back  to  work?" 

"When  you  tell  me  you  have  broken  off  your  clandes- 
tine engagement." 

"But  father " 

"There  are  no  buts,  Ingeborg." 

"But  vou  said  in  vour  sermon " 


The  Bishop  passed  on. 

In  her  eagerness  Ingeborg  put  her  hand  detainingly 
on  his  sleeve,  a  familiarity  hitherto  unheard  of  in  that 
ordered  and  temperate  household. 

"  But  your  sermon — you  said  in  your  sermon,  father- 
why,  how  can  free  forgiveness  have  conditions?    They 
didn't  do  it  that  way  in  the  Bible" — (this  to  him  who 

101 


102  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

was  by  the  very  nature  of  his  high  office  a  specialist  in 
forgiveness;  poor  girl,  poor  girl) — "You  said  yourself 
about  the  Prodigal  Son — his  father  forgave  everything, 
and  perhaps  he'd  done  worse  things  even  than  going 
to   Lucerne " 

"We  are  not  told,  Ingeborg,  of  any  clandestine  en- 
gagement," said  the  Bishop,  pursuing  his  way  ham- 
pered but,  as  he  was  glad  to  remember  afterwards,  calm. 

"But  you  know  about  it — how  can  it  be  clandestine 
when  you  know  about  it?" 

"Once  more,  Ingeborg,  there  are  no  buts." 

"But  why  shouldn't  I  marry  a  good  man?" 

She  was  actually  following  him  up  quite  a  number 
of  the  stairs,  still  with  her  hand  on  his  arm,  and  her 
face,  so  unattractive  in  its  unwomanly  eagerness,  quite 
close  to  his. 

"Why  should  I  have  to  be  forgiven  for  wanting 
to  marry  a  good  man?  Everybody  marries  good  men. 
Mother  did,  and  you  never  told  her  she  wasn't  to. 
Oh,  oh — — -"  she  went  on,  as  his  dressing-room  door 
was  quietly  closed  upon  her,  "that  isn't  free  forgiveness 
at  all — it  isn't  what  you  said — it  isn't  what  you  said 
— it's  conditions"    .    .    . 

And  her  voice  from  the  doormat  became  quite  a  cry, 
regardless  of  possible  listening  Wilsons. 

How  glad  he  was  that  he  had  been  able  to  put  her 
aside  quietly  and  get  himself,  still  controlled,  into  his 
dressing-room.  How  strange  and  new  were  these  reck- 
less outbreaks  of  unreserve.  And  her  reasoning,  how 
wholly  deplorable.  She  wished,  unhappy  girl,  to  enjoy 
the  advantages  and  privileges  of  the  forgiven  state 
while  continuing  in  the  sin  that  had  procured  the 
forgiveness.  She  wished,  he  reflected,  though  in  edu- 
cated language,  to  eat  her  cake  and  have  it,  too.     Yet 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  103 

was  it  not  clear  that  a  free  forgiveness  could  only  be 
bestowed  on  an  unlimited  penitence?  There  could  be 
no  reservations  of  particular  branches  of  sin.  All  must 
be  lopped.  And  the  East  Prussian  pastor  was  a  branch 
that  must  be  lopped  with  the  cleanest  final  cut  before 
real  submission  could  be  said  to  have  set  in. 

But  the  Bishop  in  his  dressing-room,  though  he 
retained  his  apparent  calm,  was  sore  within  him.  His 
sermon  had  failed.  The  girl  must  be  a  stone.  It  wasn't, 
he  thought  profoundly  worried,  as  if  he  hadn't  given 
her  nearly  a  week  for  undisturbed  thought  and  hadn't 
approached  her  that  day  with  all  the  helpfulness  in  his 
power  from  the  pulpit.  Both  these  things  he  had  done; 
and  she  was  no  nearer  recovery  than  before.  Was 
training  then  nothing?  Was  environment  nothing? 
Was  blood  nothing?  Was  the  blood  of  bishops,  that 
blood  which  of  all  bloods  must  surely  be  most  potent 
in  preventing  its  inheritors  in  all  their  doings,  nothing? 

On  the  following  afternoon  there  was  a  party  at  the 
Palace,  arranged  by  Mrs.  Bullivant  in  the  confident 
days  before  she  knew  what  Ingeborg  was  really  like. 
It  was  a  congratulatory  party  for  Judith,  and  all  Red- 
chester  and  all  the  county  had  been  invited.  Nothing 
could  stop  this  party  but  a  death  in  the  household — 
any  death,  even  Richards'  might  do,  but  nothing  short 
of  death,  thought  the  afflicted  lady,  wondering  how 
she  was  to  get  through  the  afternoon;  and  as  she 
crept  on  to  her  sofa  at  a  quarter  to  four  to  be  put  by 
Richards  into  the  final  folds  and  knew  that  as  four 
struck  a  great  surge  of  friends  would  pour  in  over  her 
and  that  for  three  hours  she  would  have  to  be  bright 
and  happy  about  Judith,  and  sympathetically  explana- 
tory about  Ingeborg — who  looked  altogether  too  odd 
to  be  explained  only  by  a  long  past  dentist — she  felt 


104  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

so  very  low  that  she  was  unable  to  stop  herself  from 
thinking  it  was  a  pity  people  didn't  die  a  little  oftener. 
Especially  maids.  Especially  maids  who  were  being  so 
clumsy  with  the  cushions.    .    .    . 

And  the  Master  of  Ananias  had  been  there  since 
before  luncheon,  and  how  exhausting  that  was.  She 
had  had  to  do  most  of  the  entertaining  of  him,  the 
Bishop  being  unavoidably  absent  from  the  meal,  and 
Ingeborg,  who  did  the  conversation  in  that  family,  not 
being  able  to  now  because  she  was  in  disgrace,  and 
Judith,  dear  child,  never  saying  much  at  any  time.  And 
the  Master  had  been  very  exuberant;  and  his  vitality, 
delightful  of  course  but  just  a  little  overwhelming  at 
his  age,  had  reminded  her  that  she  needed  care.  How 
difficult  it  had  been  to  get  him  out  into  the  garden,  to 
somewhere  where  she  wasn't.  She  hadn't  got  him  there 
till  half-past  two,  by  which  time  he  had  been  vital 
without  stopping  since  twelve,  and  even  then  she  had 
had  to  invent  a  pear-tree  in  full  blossom  that  she  wasn't 
at  all  sure  about,  and  tell  him  she  had  heard  it  was  a 
wonderful  sight  and  ought  not  to  be  missed.  But  how 
difficult  it  had  been.  Judith  had  not  seemed  to  want 
to  show  him  the  pear-tree,  and  he  would  not  go  and 
look  at  it  unless  she  went,  too.  Judith  had  gone  at  last, 
but  with  an  expression  on  her  face  as  though  she 
thought  she  was  going  to  have  to  bear  things,  and  no 
girl  should  show  a  thought  like  that  before  marriage. 
And  then  there  had  been  an  immense  number  of  small 
matters  to  see  to  because  of  the  party,  matters  Ingeborg 
had  always  seen  to  but  couldn't  now  because  she  was  in 
disgrace,  and  how  difficult  all  that  was.  Still,  Mrs. 
Bullivant  felt  deeply  if  vaguely  that  nobody  temporarily 
evil  should  be  allowed  to  minister  to  anybody  per- 
manently good.     Such  persons,  she  felt,  should  be  put 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  105 

aside  into  a  place  made  roomy  for  repentance  by  the 
clearing  out  of  all  claims.  During  the  whole  of  the 
week  since  her  daughter's  return  she  had  not  let  her 
even  pour  out  tea,  either  when  the  riven  family  was  by 
itself  or  when  congratulatory  callers  came.  "Poor 
Ingeborg  isn't  very  well,"  she  had  murmured,  quench- 
ing the  inquisitiveness  natural  to  callers.  She  had 
made  up  her  mind  that  first  evening,  when  the  full 
horror  of  what  her  daughter  had  done  became  clear 
to  her,  that  she  would  ask  nothing  of  her,  not  even  tea. 

But  it  did  make  difficulties.  She  felt  entirely  low, 
quite  damp  with  the  exertion  of  meeting  them,  when 
she  crept  into  position  on  the  sofa  at  a  quarter  to  four 
and  waited  with  closed  eyes  for  the  next  wave  of  life 
that  would  wash  over  her.  And  it  all  happened  as 
she  had  feared — she  was  perpetually  having  to  explain 
Ingeborg.  Guest  after  guest  came  up  with  the  ex- 
pressions of  rejoicing  proper  to  guests  invited  to  rejoice 
over  Judith,  and  the  smiling  laudations  of  what  was 
indeed  a  vision  of  beauty  each  ended  with  a  question 
about  Ingeborg.  What  had  she  been  doing? — (the 
awful  innocence  of  the  question) — how  perfectly  miser- 
ably seedy  she  looked;  poor  little  Ingeborg;  was  it  really 
just  that  tiresome  tooth? 

Mrs.  Bullivant,  as  she  murmured  what  she  could  in 
reply  to  this  ceaseless  flow  of  sympathy  from  the  retired 
officers  and  their  wives  and  daughters,  and  the  cathedral 
dignitaries  and  their  wives  and  daughters,  and  the  wives 
and  daughters  of  the  county  who  came  without  their 
men  because  their  men  wouldn't  come,  felt  vaguely  but 
deeply  that  it  was  somehow  wrong  that  Ingeborg 
should  both  sin  and  be  sympathised  with.  She  had  no 
right,  her  injured  mother  felt,  to  look  so  small  and 
stricken.     Her  family  had  quite  properly  removed  her 


106  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

outside  the  pale  of  their  affection  till  she  should  an- 
nounce her  broken-off  engagement  to  that  dreadful 
German  and  ask  to  be  forgiven  for  ever  having  been 
engaged  at  all,  but  she  ought  not  to  look  like  some- 
body who  is  outside  a  pale.  She  seemed  positively 
to  be  advertising  the  pale.  It  was  bad  taste.  It  was 
really  the  worst  of  taste  when  you  were  the  sinner  to 
look  like  the  sinned  against;  to  look  ill-used;  to  droop 
openly.  Yet  never  could  a  girl  who  had  done  such 
horrible,  such  detestably  deceitful  and  vulgar  things, 
have  been  treated  so  gently  by  her  family.  It  had 
been,  Mrs.  Bullivant  felt,  the  only  good  thing  in  a 
wretched  affair,  the  perfect  breeding  with  which  the 
Bullivants  had  met  the  situation.  Not  one  of  them 
had  even  remotely  alluded  to  the  scene  she  had  made 
the  first  afternoon.  No  one  had  questioned  her,  no 
one  had  troubled  her  in  any  way.  She  had  been  left 
quite  free,  and  no  one  had  exacted  the  smallest  sacrifice 
of  her  time  to  any  of  their  needs.  Her  father  had 
given  her  a  complete  holiday,  not  allowing  her  at  all 
in  his  study,  and  whenever  she  had  attempted  to  do 
anything  for  her  mother  or  in  the  house  Richards  had 
been  rung  for.  Judith,  dear  child,  seemed  instinctively 
to  do  the  right  thing,  and  without  a  word  from  her 
mother  avoided  Ingeborg;  she  was  so  delicate  about  it, 
so  fine  in  her  feeling  that  here  was  something  not  quite 
nice,  that  she  turned  red  each  time  Ingeborg  during 
the  first  day  or  two  tried  to  talk  to  her,  and  quietly 
went  into  another  room.  All  the  last  part  of  the  week 
Ingeborg  had  spent  in  the  garden,  quite  free,  quite 
undisturbed,  not  a  claim  on  her.  And  yet  here  she 
was,  standing  about  at  the  party  or  sitting  alone  in 
foolish  corners,  thin,  and  pale,  and  unsmiling,  like  a 
reproach. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  107 

Through  a  gap  in  the  crowd  Mrs.  Bullivant  pres- 
ently saw  her  being  talked  to  by  one  who  had  once 
been  a  general  but  now  in  retirement  wreaked  his 
disciplines  on  bees.  She  just  had  time  to  notice  how 
her  daughter  started  and  flushed  when  this  man  sud- 
denly addressed  her — such  bad  manners  to  start  and 
flush — before  the  crowd  closed  again.  She  shut  her 
eyes  for  a  moment  and  felt  very  helpless.  Who  knew 
to  what  lengths  Ingeborg's  bad  manners  might  not  go, 
and  what  she  might  not  be  saying  to  the  man? 

What  the  general  was  telling  her,  with  the  hearty 
kindliness  fathers  of  other  daughters  use  to  daughters 
of  other  fathers — will  use,  indeed,  commented  the 
Bishop  observing  the  incident  from  afar  and  allowing 
himself  the  solace  of  an  instant's  bitterness,  to  any 
created  female  thing  if  only  she  will  oblige  them  by  not 
being  their  own — was  that  he  couldn't  have  her  looking 
like  this. 

"Oh,  like  what?"  asked  Ingeborg  quickly,  starting 
and  flushing;  for  her  week  as  an  outcast  had  lowered 
her  vitality  to  such  an  extent  that  she  was  morbidly 
afraid  her  face  might  somehow  have  become  a  sort  of 
awful  crystal  in  which  everybody  would  be  able  to 
see  the  Rigi,  and  herself  being  proposed  to  on  its 
top. 

"Shocking  white  about  the  gills,"  said  the  hearty 
man  standing  over  her,  cup  in  hand  and  see-sawing  on 
his  toes  and  heels  because  his  boots  creaked  and  it  gave 
him  a  vague  pleasure  to  make  them  go  on  doing  it. 
"You  must  come  round  and  have  a  good  game  of 
tennis  with  Dorothy  some  afternoon.  You've  been 
shut  up  working  too  hard  at  that  letter- writing  business, 
that's  what  you've  been  doing,  young  lady." 

"I  wish  I  had — oh,  I  wish  I  had,"  said  Ingeborg, 


108  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

pressing  her  hands  together  and  looking  up  at  this 
stray  bit  of  kindliness  with  a  quick  gratefulness. 

'We  always  think  of  you  as  sitting  there  writing, 
writing,"  the  hearty  man  went  on,  more  intent  on  what 
he  was  saying  than  on  what  she  was  saying.  "Father's 
right  hand,  mother's  indispensable,  you  know.  I  tell 
Dorothy " 

Ingeborg  twisted  on  her  chair.  "Oh,"  she  said, 
"don't  tell  Dorothy— don't  tell  her " 

"Tell  her  what?  You  don't  know  what  I  was  going 
to  say." 

'Yes,  I  do — about  that's  how  daughters  ought  to 
be — like  me.  And  Dorothy's  so  good  and  dear,  and 
wouldn't  ever  in  this  world  have  gone  off  to " 

She  stopped,  but  only  just  in  time,  and  looked  at 
him  frightened. 

She  had  all  but  said  it.  The  general,  however,  was 
staring  at  her  with  kindly  incomprehension.  Her  head 
drooped  a  little,  and  she  gazed  vaguely  at  his  toes  as 
they  rhythmically  touched  and  were  lifted  up  from  the 
carpet.  "Nobody  knows  what  anybody  else  is  really 
like  inside,"  she  finished  forlornly. 

'You  come  up  and  have  some  tennis,"  he  said, 
patting  her  on  the  shoulder.  And  later  on  to  the 
Bishop  he  remarked,  in  his  hearty  desire  to  have  every- 
thing trim  and  in  its  proper  place,  the  young  in  the 
fresh  air,  older  persons  at  desks  in  studies,  white  faces 
reserved  for  invalids,  roses  blooming  in  the  cheeks  of 
girls,  that  he  mustn't  overwork  that  little  daughter  of 
his. 

"Overwork!"  exclaimed  the  Bishop,  full  of  bitter 
memories  of  an  empty  week. 

"Turn  her  out  into  the  sun,  Bully,  my  boy,"  said 
the  general  whose  fag  the  Bishop  had  been  at  Eton. 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  109 

"Into  the  sun!"  exclaimed  the  Bishop,  having  for 
six  mortal  days  observed  her  from  windows  horribly 
idling  in  it. 

"If  you  keep  'em  shut  up  you  can't  expect  girls 
any  more  than  you  can  expect  a  decent  bee  to  provide 
you  with  honey." 

"Honey!"  exclaimed  the  Bishop. 

That  Duchess  who  had  wanted  her  eldest  son  to  marry 
Judith  tapped  Ingeborg  on  the  arm  with  her  umbrella 
as  she  passed  her  followed  by  her  daughter  and  said: 
"Little  pale  child,  little  pale  child,"  and  shook  her 
head  at  her  and  frowned  and  smiled,  and  whispered  to 
Pamela  that  it  looked  very  like  jealousy;  and  Pamela 
said  Nonsense  to  that,  and  tried  to  linger  and  talk  to 
Ingeborg,  but  her  mother,  filled  with  the  passion  for 
refreshment  that  seizes  all  persons  who  go  to  parties, 
dragged  her  along  with  her  to  where  it  could  be  found, 
and  on  the  way  she  was  seen  by  the  Bishop,  who  at 
once  left  the  old  lady  who  was  talking  to  him  to  en- 
fold Lady  Pamela  in  his  care  and  compass  her  about 
with  a  cloud  of  little  attentions — chairs,  ices,  fruit;  for 
not  only  had  he  confirmed  her  but  he  felt  a  peculiar 
interest  in  her  particular  kind  of  clean-limbed  intelli- 
gent beauty.  Of  all  the  confirmation  crosses  he  had 
given  away  he  liked  best  to  think  of  Lady  Pamela's. 
Certainly  in  that  soft  cradle,  beneath  the  muslin  and 
lace  of  propriety,  he  could  be  sure  it  would  not  jangle 
against  an  illicit  and  alien  ring. 

"You  still  wear  it?"  he  said,  his  beautiful  voice, 
lowered  to  suit  the  subject,  charged  with  feeling  as 
with  his  own  hands  he  brought  her  tea;  and  he  felt 
a  little  checked,  a  little  disappointed,  when  she  said, 
smiling  at  him,  her  grey  eyes  level  with  his  so  well 
grown  was  she,  "Wear  what?" 


110  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

And  another  thing  this  young  woman  did  that 
afternoon  that  checked  and  disappointed  him — she 
showed  a  disposition  to  take  care  of  him;  and  no 
bishop  of  sixty,  or  indeed  any  other  honest  man  of 
sixty,  likes  that.  "She  thinks  me  old,"  he  thought 
with  acute  and  pained  surprise  as  she  charmingly  made 
him  sit  down  lest  he  might  be  tired  standing,  and 
charmingly  shut  a  window  behind  them  lest  he  should 
be  in  a  draught,  and  charmingly  later  on  when  he  took 
her  down  the  garden  to  show  her  the  pear-tree  turned 
her  pretty  head  and  asked  him  over  her  shoulder 
whether  she  were  walking  too  fast.  "She  thinks  me  old" 
he  thought;  and  it  was  an  amazement  to  him,  for  only 
last  year  he  was  still  fifty-nine,  still  in  the  fifties,  and  the 
fifties,  once  one  was  used  to  them,  were  nothing  at  all. 

He  became  very  grave  with  Lady  Pamela.  He  felt 
that  the  showing  of  the  pear-tree  had  lost  a  good  deal 
of  its  savour.  He  felt  it  still  more  when,  turning  the 
bend  in  the  path  that  led  to  the  secluded  corner  that 
made  the  pear-tree  popular  as  a  resort,  he  perceived 
Ingeborg  sitting  beneath  it. 

She  was  alone. 

'  Why  is  she  always  by  herself?  "  asked  Lady  Pamela, 
who  was,  the  Bishop  could  not  help  thinking,  being 
rather  steadily  tactless. 

He  made  no  answer.  He  was  too  seriously  nettled. 
Apart  from  everything  else,  to  have  one's  daughter 
cropping  up.     .     .     . 

"Ingeborg — !"  called  Lady  Pamela,  waving  her 
sunshade  to  attract  her  attention  as  they  walked  on 
towards  her,  for  Ingeborg,  under  the  tree,  was  sitting 
with  her  chin  on  her  hand  looking  at  nothing  and  once 
more  advertising  by  her  attitude,  Mrs.  Bullivant  would 
have  considered,  that  she  was  outside  the  pale. 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  111 

''I  think,"  said  the  Bishop  pausing,  "we  ought  per- 
haps to  go  back." 

"Ought  we?    Oh,  why?    It's  lovely  here.    Ingeborg!" 

"I  think,"  said  the  Bishop,  now  altogether  annoyed 
at  this  persistent  determination  to  include  his  daughter 
— as  though  one  could  ever  satisfactorily  include 
daughters — in  what  might  have  been  a  poetic  con- 
versation between  beauty  and  youth  on  the  one  side 
and  prestige  and  more  than  common  gifts  on  the  other, 
beauty,  too,  if  you  come  to  that,  and  as  great  in  its 
male  ripe  way  as  hers  in  its  girlishness — "I  think  that 
I  at  any  rate  must  go  back.     My  wife " 

"Ingeborg!  Wake  up!  What  are  you  dreaming 
about?" 

Positively  Lady  Pamela  was  not  listening  to  him. 

He  turned  on  his  heel  and  left  her  to  go  on  waving 
her  sunshade  at  his  daughter  if  that  was  what  she 
liked,  and  went  back  towards  the  house  reflecting  that 
women  really  are  quite  sadly  deficient  in  imagination 
and  that  it  is  a  great  pity.  Even  this  one,  this  well- 
bred,  well-taught  bright  being,  was  so  unimaginative 
that  she  actually  saw  no  reason  why  a  man's  grown-up 
daughter  .  .  .  Really  a  deficiency  of  imagination 
amounted  to  stupidity.  He  hardly  liked  to  have  to 
admit  that  Lady  Pamela  was  stupid,  but  anyhow  women 
ought  not  to  have  the  vote. 

He  went  away  back  into  the  main  garden  along  the 
path  by  the  great  herbaceous  border  then  in  a  special 
splendour  of  tulips  and  all  the  clean  magnificence  of  May, 
thinking  with  his  eyes  on  the  ground  how  different 
things  would  have  been  if  when  he  was  a  curate  he  had 
been  sane  enough  not  to  marry.  The  clearness  now  in 
his  life  if  only  he  had  not  done  that!  Nobody  sofa- 
ridden  in  it,   no  grown-up  thwarting  daughters,   and 


112  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

himself  vigorous,  distinguished,  entirely  desirable  as  a 
husband,  choosing  with  the  mellow,  yet  not  too  mellow, 
wisdom  of  middle  life  exactly  who  was  best  fitted  to 
share  the  advantages  he  had  to  offer.  Even  Lady 
Pamela  would  not  then  have  been  able  to  think  of  him 
as  old.  It  was  his  family  that  dated  him:  his  grey- 
haired  wife,  his  grown-up  daughters.  The  folly  of 
curates!  The  black  incurable  folly  of  curates.  And 
he  forgot  for  a  gloomy  instant  what  he  as  a  rule  with 
a  sigh  acknowledged,  that  it  had  all  been  Providence, 
even  then  restlessly  at  work  guiding  him,  and  that  Mrs. 
Bullivant  and  the  girls  merely  constituted  one  of  its 
manv  inscrutable  ends. 

The  baser  portion  of  the  Bishop's  brain  was  about 
to  substitute  another  word  for  guiding  when  he  was 
saved — providentially,  the  nobler  portion  of  his  brain 
instantly  pointed  out — by  encountering  the  Duchess. 

She  was  coming  slowly  along  examining  the  plants 
in  the  border  with  the  interest  of  a  garden-lover,  and 
pointing  out  by  means  of  her  umbrella  the  various 
successes  to  a  man  the  Bishop  took  to  be  one  of  her 
party.  He  was  a  big  man  in  ill-fitting  shiny  black 
with  something  of  the  air  of  one  of  the  less  reputable 
Cabinet  Ministers  and  was,  in  fact,  Herr  Dremmel; 
but  no  one  except  Herr  Dremmel  knew  it.  He  had 
arrived  that  afternoon,  a  man  animated  by  a  single 
purpose,  which  was  to  marry  Ingeborg  as  soon  as 
possible  and  get  back  quickly  to  his  work;  and  he  had 
come  straight  from  the  station  to  the  Palace  and  walked 
in  unquestioned  with  all  the  others,  and  after  a  period 
of  peering  about  in  the  drawing-room  for  Ingeborg  had 
drifted  out  into  the  garden,  where  he  had  at  once 
stumbled  upon  the  Duchess,  who  was  being  embittered 
by  a  prebendary  of  servile  habits  who  insisted  on  agree- 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  113 

ing  with  her  as  to  the  Latin  name  of  a  patch  of  Prophet- 
flower  when  she  knew  all  the  time  she  was  wrong. 

"You  tell  me,"  she  said,  turning  on  Herr  Dremmel 
who  was  peering  at  them. 

"What  shall  I  tell  you,  madam?"  he  inquired, 
politely  sweeping  off  his  felt  hat  and  bowing  beauti- 

fully.  * 

"This.     What  is  its  name?     I've  forgotten." 

Herr  Dremmel,  who  took  a  large  interest  in  botany, 
immediately  told  her. 

"Of  course,"  said  the  Duchess.  "I  knew  it  was 
Arnebia  even  when  I  said  it  was  something  else.  It's  a 
borage." 

"Arnebia  echinoides,  madam,"  said  Herr  Dremmel 
peering  closer.    "A  native  of  Armenia." 

"Of  course  they'll  conquer  us,"  remarked  the  Duchess 
to  the  prebendary. 

"Oh,  of  course,"  he  agreed,  though  he  did  not  take 
her  meaning,  for  he  had  been  a  prebendary  some  time 
and  was  a  little  slow,  intellectually,  at  getting  under 
way. 

Then  the  Duchess  dropped  him  and  turned  entirely 
to  Herr  Dremmel,  who  though  he  had  never  seen  a 
herbaceous  border  in  his  life  by  sheer  reasoning  was 
able  to  tell  her  very  intimately  what  the  Bishop,  who 
he  supposed  did  the  digging,  had  been  doing  to  it  the 
previous  autumn,  and  the  exact  amount  and  nature  of 
the  fertilizers  he  had  put  in. 

She  was  suggesting  he  should  come  back  with  her 
that  afternoon  to  Coops  and  stay  there  indefinitely,  so 
profound  and  attractive  did  his  knowledge  seem  of 
what  her  own  garden  and  her  farm  needed  in  the  way 
of  a  treatment  he  alluded  to  as  cross-dressing,  when  he 
interrupted    her — a    thing    that    had    never    happened 


114  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

to  her  before  while  inviting  somebody  to  Coops — to 
inquire  why  there  were  so  very  many  people  in  the 
drawing-room  and  on  the  lawn. 

The  Duchess  stared.  "It's  a  party,"  she  said.  "To 
celebrate  the  betrothal.     Don't  you  know?" 

"I  am  gratified,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  "to  find  the 
parents  so  evidently  pleased.  It  adds  a  grace  to  what 
was  already  full  of  charm.  But  would  it  not  have  been 
more  complete  if  they  had  invited  me?" 

"I  quite  agree  with  you,"  said  the  Duchess.  "Much 
more  complete.  Well,  anyhow,  here  you  are.  So  you 
think  my  soil  wants  nitrogen?" 

"Certainly,  madam.  In  the  form  of  rape  cape  and 
ammonia  salts — but  combined  with  organic  manure. 
Artificial  manure  alone  will  not,  in  hot  weather — who 
is  that?"  he  broke  off,  pointing  with  his  umbrella  to 
the  Bishop  advancing  along  the  path,  his  eyes  on  the 
ground,  sardonically  meditating. 

"What?"  said  the  Duchess,  intent  on  the  notes  she 
was  making  of  his  recommendations  in  her  note-book. 

"That,"  said  Herr  Dremmel. 

The  Duchess  looked  up.  'Why,  the  Bishop,  of 
course.    Go  on  about  the  hot  weather." 

"Her  father,"  said  Herr  Dremmel;  and  he  ad- 
vanced, hat  in  hand,  and  the  other  held  out  in  friend- 
liest greeting,  to  meet  him. 

The  Duchess  went  after  him.  "Bishop,"  she  said, 
"this  is  a  man  who  knows  all  the  things  worth  knowing." 
And  the  Bishop,  taking  this  to  be  her  introduction  of 
a  friend,  cordially  returned  Herr  Dremmel's  handshake. 

He  was  never  cordial  again. 

"Sir,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  "I  am  greatly  pleased 
to  make  your  acquaintance.  My  name  is  Dremmel. 
Robert  Dremmel." 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  115 

The  Bishop  had  just  enough  self-control  not  to  snatch 
his  hand  away,  but  to  let  Herr  Dremmel  continue  to 
hold  and  press  it.  His  mind  began  to  leap  about.  How 
to  get  the  Duchess  away;  how  to  get  Herr  Dremmel 
turned,  noiselessly,  out  of  the  house;  how  to  prevent 
Ingeborg's  coming  at  any  moment  along  the  path 
behind  them  with  Lady  Pamela.    .    .    . 

'We  have  every  reason,  sir,"  said  Herr  Dremmel, 
holding  the  Bishop's  hand  in  a  firm  pressure,  "to  con- 
gratulate each  other,  I  you,  on  the  possession  of  such  a 
daughter,  you  me " 

"Isn't  she  a  lovely  girl,"  said  the  Duchess,  for  whom 
only  Judith  existed  in  that  family.  "Would  rape  cake 
and  the  other  thing  help  my  flowers  at  all,  or  is  it  only 
for  the  mangels?" 

"Mangels!"  thought  the  Bishop,  "Rape  cake!" 
And  swiftly  glanced  behind  him  down  the  path. 

"Sir,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  desiring  to  be  very  pleasant 
to  the  Bishop  and  slightly  waving  the  Duchess  aside, 
"permit  me  also  to  congratulate  you " 

"Have  you  had  any  tea?"  inquired  the  Bishop  des- 
sperately  of  the  Duchess,  turning  to  her  and  getting 
his  hand  away. 

"Thank  you,  yes.  Well,  Mr.  Dremmel?  Don't  in- 
terrupt him,  Bishop,  he's  most  interesting." 

on  the  results,"  continued  Herr  Dremmel   to 

the  Bishop,  "of  your  autumnal  activities.  This  blaze 
of  flowers  is  sufficient  witness  to  the  devotion,  the 
assiduity " 

'You  don't  suppose  he  did  it  himself,  do  you?"  said 
the  Duchess. 

"And  your  costume,  sir,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  con- 
centrated on  the  Bishop  and  earnestly  desiring  to  please, 
"suggests  a  quite  particular  and  familiar  interest  in 


116  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

what   this  lady  rightly  calls  the  things  really  worth 
knowing." 

"But  he  can't  help  wearing  that,"  said  the  Duchess. 

Again  Herr  Dremmel,  and  with  some  impatience, 
waved  her  aside. 

"It  is  a  costume  most  appropriate  in  a  garden,"  he 
continued.  "Even  the  gaiters  are  horticultural,  and 
the  apron  is  pleasantly  reminiscent  of  the  innocence  of 
our  first  parents.    So  Adam  might  have  dressed " 

"Oh,  but  you  must  come  to  Coops!"  cried  the  Duch- 
ess.    "Bishop,  he's  to  come  back  with  me." 

"Sir,"  said  Herr  Dremmel  with  something  of  severity, 
for  he  was  beginning  to  consider  the  Duchess  forward, 
"is  this  lady  Mrs.  Bishop?" 

"Oh,  oh!"  screamed  the  Duchess,  while  Herr  Drem- 
mel watched  her  disapprovingly  and  the  Bishop  strug- 
gled not  to  seize  him  by  the  throat. 

"My  dear  Bishop,"  said  the  Duchess,  wiping  her 
eyes,  "I  never  had  such  a  compliment  paid  me.  The 
best-looking  bishop  on  the  bench " 

"Do  come  indoors,"  he  implored.  "I  can't  really 
let  you  stand  about  like  this " 

"Thank  you,  I'm  not  in  the  least  tired.  Go  on, 
Mr.  Dremmel." 

"Sir,  can  I  see  you  alone?"  said  Herr  Dremmel, 
now  without  any  doubt  as  to  the  Duchess's  forward- 
ness. "On  such  an  occasion  as  this,  before  we  begin 
together  openly  to  rejoice  it  seems  fitting  we  should 
first  by  ourselves,  unless  this  lady  is  your  daughter's 
mother " 

"Oh,  oh!"  again  screamed  the  Duchess. 

The  Bishop  turned  on  him  in  a  kind  of  blaze,  quite 
uncontrollable.  "Yes,  sir,  you  can,"  he  said.  "Come 
into  my  study " 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  117 

"  What?     Are  you  going  to  take  him  away  from  me?  " 
cried  the  Duchess. 

"My  dear  Duchess,  if  he  has  business  with  me " 

said  the  Bishop.  "I'll  take  you  indoors  first,"  he  said, 
offering  her  his  arm.  'This  gentleman" — he  glared 
at  him  sideways,  and  Herr  Dremmel,  all  unused  as  he 
was  to  noticing  hostility,  yet  was  a  little  surprised  at 
the  expression  of  his  face — "will  wait  here.  No,  no, 
he  won't,  he'll  come,  too" — for  approaching  round  the 
bushes  behind  which  grew  the  pear-tree  the  Bishop  had 
caught  sight  of  skirts.     "Come  on,  sir " 

"But "  said  the  Duchess,  as  the  Bishop  drew 

her  hand  hastily  through  his  arm  and  began  to  walk 
her  off  more  quickly  than  she  had  been  walked  off  for 
years. 

"Come  on,  sir "  the  Bishop  flung  back,  almost 

hissed  back,  at  Herr  Dremmel. 

"One  moment,"  said  Herr  Dremmel  holding  up  his 
hand,  his  gaze  fixed  on  what  was  emerging  from  the 
bushes. 

"Come  on,  sir!"  cried  the  Bishop,  "I  can  only  see 
you  alone  if  you  come  at  once " 

But  Herr  Dremmel  did  not  heed  him.  He  was  watch- 
ing the  bushes. 

'Will  you  come?"  said  the  Bishop,  pausing  and 
stamping  his  foot,  while  he  held  the  Duchess  tight  in 
the  grip  of  his  arm. 

'Why,"  said  Herr  Dremmel  without  heeding  him, 
"why — yes — why  it  is — why,  here  at  last  appears  the 
Little  Sugar  Lamb!" 

'The  little  what?"  said  the  Duchess,  resolutely  pull- 
ing out  her  hand  from  the  Bishop's  arm  and  putting 
up  her  eyeglass.  "Heavens  above  us,  he  can't  mean 
Pamela?" 


118  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

But  nobody  answered  her;  and  indeed  it  was  not 
necessary,  for  Herr  Dremmel,  gone  down  the  path  with 
a  swiftness  amazing  in  one  of  his  appearance,  was 
already,  in  the  sight  of  all  Redchester  and  most  of  the 
county,  enfolding  Ingeborg  in  his  arms. 

"Of  course,"  was  the  Duchess's  comment  to  the 
Bishop  as  she  watched  the  scene  with  her  eyeglass 
up  and  the  placidity  of  relief,  "of  course  they  will 
conquer  us." 


CHAPTER  XI 

AND  so  it  came  to  pass  that  Herr  Dremmel, 
L\  armed  only  with  simplicity,  set  aside  the  re- 
X  -A.  sistances  of  princes,  potentates,  and  powers, 
and  was  married  to  Ingeborg  by  her  father  the  Bishop 
in  his  own  cathedral.  And  it  was  done  as  quickly  as 
the  law  allowed,  not  only  because  Herr  Dremmel  was 
determined  it  should  be,  but  because  the  enduring  of 
his  daily  arrival  for  courting  purposes  from  Coops, 
where  he  was  staying,  became  rapidly  impossible  for 
the  Bishop.  Also  there  was  the  Master  of  Ananias, 
spurred  to  a  frenzy  of  activity  by  Herr  Dremmel's 
success  in  getting  things  hurried  on,  insisting  that  he 
had  been  engaged  long  enough  and  demanding  to  be 
married  on  the  same  dav. 

In  the  end  he  was,  and  Ingeborg's  wedding,  being 
Judith's  as  well,  was  unavoidably  splendid.  All  along 
the  line  the  Bishop's  hand  was  forced.  The  very  wed- 
ding-dress had  to  be  as  beautiful  for  the  one  as  for 
the  other  of  his  daughters;  and,  absurdly  and  wickedly, 
he  was  obliged  to  spend  as  much  on  her  trousseau  who 
was  going  into  pauperdom  and  obscurity  for  the  rest  of 
her  days  as  on  hers  who  would  no  doubt  be  soon,  though 
of  course  only  in  God's  good  time,  the  most  magnificent 
of  widows.  He  never  afterwards  was  able  to  feel  quite 
the  same  to  the  Duchess.  Without  knowing  anything 
of  the  circumstances,  of  the  secret  disgrace  of  the 
affair,  of  the  blank  undesirability  in  any  case  of  such  a 

119 


120  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

son-in-law,  of  the  extraordinary  inconvenience  and 
pecuniary  loss  of  Ingeborg's  marrying  at  all,  she  had 
taken  up  Herr  Dremmel  to  an  extent  that  was  positively 
near  making  her  ridiculous,  supposing  that,  humanly 
speaking,  were  possible,  and  had  rammed  him  down  the 
county's  throat  till  at  last  it  believed  that  of  the  two 
husbands  Ingeborg  had  secured  the  better.  And  this 
gossip  filtered  through  into  the  Palace,  and  Judith,  who 
never  did  speak,  spoke  less  than  ever,  but  edging  away 
more  and  more  decidedly  from  the  blandishments  of  the 
Master,  who  had  not  been  invited  to  Coops,  spent 
most  of  her  time  in  her  own  room  engaged  in  not 
looking  at  her  trousseau;  and  the  Palace  became  such 
an  uncomfortable  place  what  with  one  thing  and  an- 
other, and  the  strain  of  remaining  calm  and  becoming 
in  conduct  to  the  ducally  protected  Herr  Dremmel  was 
so  great,  that  at  last  the  Bishop  was  as  eager  as  any  one 
to  get  the  wedding  over  and  feverishly  furthered  any 
scheme  that  would,  by  hastening  it,  deliver  him. 

To  Ingeborg  he  never  spoke,  but  turned  away  with 
the  same  cold  horror  that  came  over  the  rest  of  the 
family  when  from  windows  he  or  it  beheld  her  being 
courted  with  what  seemed  a  terrible  German  thorough- 
ness in  places  like  the  middle  of  the  lawn.  He  could 
no  longer  walk  round  his  own  garden  without  meeting 
an  interlaced  couple;  and  though  he  suggested  to  Herr 
Dremmel  with  what  he  felt  was  really  admirable  self- 
restraint  that  these  public  endearments  might  give 
rise  to  comment,  Herr  Dremmel  merely  replied  that  as 
Ingeborg  was  his  Braut  it  ought  to  give  rise  to  much 
more  comment,  even  to  justifiable  complaints,  if  his 
manner  to  her  were  less  warm. 

"In    England  we  do  not "  began  the  Bishop; 

but  broke  off  for  fear  of  losing  his  self-restraint.    And 


f^V_? 


ARTHUR. 
MTLE_ 


He  could  no  longer  walk  around  his  own  garden  without 
meeting  an  interlaced  con  pie 


THE    PASTOR'S  WIFE  121 

Herr  Dremmel  and  Ingeborg  continuing  to  perambulate 
the  garden  slowly,  with  a  frequent  readjusting  of  their 
steps  to  each  other's — for  it  is  a  difficult  method,  the 
interlaced  one,  of  getting  along  a  path — the  Bishop 
and  Mrs.  Bullivant  retreated  for  refreshment  and  com- 
fort to  the  delicacy  of  Judith,  to  her  lovely  withdrawals. 
That  the  Master  should  blandish  was  natural,  because 
a  man  is  natural;  but  they  knew  that  a  woman,  if  she 
is  to  approach  any  ideal  of  true  womanhood,  cannot  be 
too  carefully  unnatural,  and  should  she  be  persuaded  or 
betrayed  into  some  expression  of  affection  for  her  lover, 
some  answering  caress,  at  least  she  must  not  like  it. 
And  there  was  Ingeborg  progressing  round  the  garden 
as  described,  or  in  the  middle  of  the  lawn  openly  having 
her  hand  held,  and  looking  pleased. 

It  was  rank. 

Ingeborg,  in  fact,  was  pleased.  She  was  more,  she 
was  extremely  happy.  Here  she  was  suddenly  no 
longer  a  disgraced  and  boycotted  and  wicked  girl,  but 
that  strangely  encouraging  object,  that  odd  restorer  of 
faith  in  oneself,  a  Little  Sugar  Lamb.  The  cosiness  of 
being  a  Sugar  Lamb !  She  had  been  so  very  miserable. 
She  had  dragged  through  such  cold,  anaemic  days.  She 
had  had  such  a  horrible  holiday,  forced  upon  her  on 
the  very  scene  of  her  activities,  and  had  had  it  brought 
home  to  her  so  freezingly,  so  blightingly,  that  she  had 
done  too  dreadful  a  thing  to  be  allowed  apparently  ever 
again  to  associate  with  the  decent.  And  Robert — she 
quickly  began  calling  him  that  to  herself  under  the  in- 
fluence of  her  family's  methods  of  reclaiming  her — had 
not  written  a  single  letter. 

"But  he  came,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  for  whose 
enlightenment  she  was  picturing  the  week  she  had 
had. 


122  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

And  her  father  would  not  speak  to  her  at  all,  would 
not  look  at  her. 

"Old  sheep,"  said  Herr  Dremmel  good-naturedly. 

And  Judith  had  seemed  entirely  horrified,  and  used  to 
blush  if  she  tried  to  speak  to  her. 

"Foolish  turkey,"  said  Herr  Dremmel  placidly. 

But  now  somehow  it  did  seem  as  if  she  needn't  have 
been  quite  so  miserable,  and  might  have  had  more  faith. 

"What  ought  the  Little  One  to  have  had  more  of?" 
asked  Herr  Dremmel;  for  his  thoughts  had  not  much 
time  to  spare,  and  he  profitably  employed  them  while 
she  talked  in  working  out  the  probable  results  of,  say, 
the  treatment  of  three  acres  of  sugar-beet  with  sulphate 
of  potash,  sulphate  of  ammonia,  and  nitrate  of  soda 
respectively,  all  of  them  receiving  400  lbs.  of  basic  slag 
as  well — would  not  sulphate  of  ammonia  be  more 
effective  as  a  nitrogenous  manure  than  nitrate  of  soda 
in  the  case  of  sugar-beets,  whose  roots  grew  smaller 
and  nearer  the  surface  than  mangels?  "That  is  what 
little  women  should  constantly  have  more  of,"  he  said, 
breaking  away  from  sugar-beets  to  a  zestful  embracing; 
for  on  this  occasion  they  were  under  the  pear-tree,  a 
place  she  seldom  went  to  because  she  had  not  yet 
acquired,  in  spite  of  his  assurances  that  she  undoubtedly 
would,  any  real  enthusiasm  for  embracings,  keeping  by 
preference  to  the  only  immune  place  in  the  garden, 
which  was  the  middle  of  the  lawn. 

"I  wonder,"  she  thought  while  it  was  being  done, 
"  if  this  will  really  grow  on  me     .     .     ." 

And,  while  it  was  still  being  done,  "Mother  must  have 
been  kissed,  too,  and  she's  still  alive     .     .     ." 

And  presently,  while  it  was  still  being  done,  "But 
mother  isn't  mueh  alive — there's  the  sofa — perhaps 
that's  why     .     .     ." 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  123 

Well,  he  loved  her,  somehow;  she  did  not  now  care 
how.  Whether  it  was  a  spiritual  affection  or  one  that 
would  go  on  requiring  at  frequent  intervals  to  enfold 
her  capaciously  did  not  matter  any  more,  for  it  was  a 
warm  thing,  a  warm  human  thing,  he  was  offering  her, 
and  she  had  been  half -dead  with  cold.  What  did  it 
matter  if  she  herself  was  not  in  love?  It  was  the 
dream  of  a  schoolgirl  to  want  to  be  in  love.  Life  was 
not  like  that.  Life  was  a  thing  full  of  friendliness  and 
happy  affection;  and  love,  anyhow  on  the  woman's 
side,  was  not  a  bit  necessary.  The  Bishop  would  have 
been  surprised  if  he  had  known  how  nearly  she  ap- 
proached his  ideal  of  womanhood.  She  was  going  to 
be  so  good,  she  said  to  herself  and  to  Herr  Dremmel, 
too,  her  heart  full  of  gratitude  and  glad  relief — oh,  so 
good!  She  was  never  going  to  be  dejected  or  beaten 
out  of  hope  and  courage  again.  She  would  work  over 
there,  work  hard  at  all  sorts  of  happy  things  in  the 
parish,  and  among  the  poor  and  sick,  and  she  would 
help  Robert  in  his  work  if  he  would  let  her,  and  if  he 
wouldn't  then  she'd  help  him  when  he  had  done — 
help  him  to  play  and  rest.  They  would  laugh  together 
and  talk  together  and  walk  together,  and  he  would 
explain  his  experiments  to  her  and  teach  her  to  under- 
stand. And  the  first  thing  she  would  do  would  be  to 
learn  German  very  thoroughly,  so  as  to  be  able  to  write 
all  his  letters  for  him,  and  even  his  sermons  if  needs  be, 
and  save  his  precious  time. 

'Those,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  who  in  the  lush 
meadows  of  dalliance  had  forgotten  that  what  had 
first  attracted  him  to  her  had  been  a  certain  bright 
baldness  of  brain,  "would  be  pretty  little  nonsense 
sermons  the  small  snail  would  produce." 

'You'll    see,"    said    Ingeborg   confidently;    and    she 


124  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

suddenly  flung  out  her  arms  and  turned  her  face  up  to 
the  sun  and  the  blue  through  the  little  leaves  and  all 
the  light  and  promise  of  the  world,  and  stretched  her- 
self in  an  immense  contentment.  "Oh,"  she  sighed, 
"isn't  it  all  good — isn't  it  all  good " 

"It  is,"  agreed  Herr  Dremmel.  "But  it  is  nothing 
to  how  good  it  will  be  presently,  when  we  are  sur- 
rounded by  our  dear  children." 

"Children?"  said  Ingeborg. 

She  dropped  her  arms  and  looked  at  him.  She  had 
not  thought  of  children. 

"Then,  indeed,  my  little  wife  will  not  wish  to  write 
letters  or  compose  sermons." 

"Why?"  said  Ingeborg. 

"Because  you  will  be  a  happy  mother." 

"But  don't  happy  mothers " 

"You  will  be  entirely  engaged  in  adoring  your  chil- 
dren.    Nothing  else  in  the  world  will  interest  you." 

Ingeborg  stood  looking  at  him  with  a  surprised  face. 
"Oh?"  she  said.  "Shall  I?"  Then  she  added,  "But 
I've  never  had  any  children." 

"It  was  not  to  be  expected,"  said  Herr  Dremmel. 

"Then  how  do  you  know  nothing  else  in  the  world 
will  interest  me?" 

"Foolish  Little  One,"  he  said,  taking  her  in  his  arms, 
his  eyes  moist  with  tenderness,  for  he  knew  that  here 
against  his  breast  he  held  in  her  slender  youth  the 
mother  of  all  the  Dremmels,  and  the  knowledge  pro- 
foundly moved  him.  "Foolish  Little  One,  is  not 
throughout  all  nature  every  mother  solely  preoccupied 
by  interest  in  her  young?" 

"Is  she?"  said  Ingeborg  doubtfully,  quite  a  number 
of  remembered  family  snapshots  dancing  before  her 
eyes.     Still,  she  was  very  willing  to  believe. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  125 

She  looked  at  him  a  moment  thinking.     "But " 


she  said,  gently  pushing  herself  a  little  way  from  him, 
both  hands  on  his  chest. 

"But  what  then,  small  snail?" 

"Wouldn't  they  be  German  children?" 

"Undoubtedly,"  said  Herr  Dremmel  proudly. 

"All  of  them?" 

"All  of  them?  "he  echoed. 

"It  wouldn't  be  like  Roman  Catholics  and  Protes- 
tants marrying,  and  half  the  children  be  German  and 
half  English?" 

"Certainly  not,"  said  Herr  Dremmel  emphatically. 

"But  Robert " 

"Continue,  little  hare." 

"What  are  German  children  like?" 

It  was  now  Herr  Dremmel's  turn  to  say  confidently, 
"You'll  see." 

A  week  later  they  were  married;  and  the  Bishop, 
inscrutably  watching  Ingebo^g  from  the  doorstep  as 
she  was  being  tucked  by  deft  hands  into  the  rugs  of 
the  car  that  was  to  take  her  to  the  station,  observing 
how  cushions  were  put  in  the  right  places  at  her  back, 
how  a  footstool  was  carefully  inserted  under  her  feet, 
how  her  least  movement  was  interpreted  and  instantly 
attended  to,  made  his  farewell  remark  to  his  daughter 
— the  last  remark,  as  it  happened,  that  he  ever  did 
make  to  her. 

"You  will  miss  W7ilson,"  he  said;  and  re-entered 
the  Palace  a  slightly  comforted  man. 

She  never  saw  him  again. 


PART  II 


CHAPTER  XII 

ON  HER  honeymoon,  which  was  only  as  long  as  it 
took  to  get  from  Redchester  to  Kokensee,  ex- 
cept for  a  day  in  Holland  where  a  brief  and 
infinitely  respectful  visit,  or  rather  waiting  on,  was  made 
to  the  eminent  De  Vries,  Ingeborg  said  to  herself  at 
frequent  intervals  as  she  had  said  to  herself  under  the 
pear-tree  in  what  now  seemed  a  remote  past,  "Perhaps 
this  will  grow  on  me."  But  even  before  they  reached 
Kokensee  on  the  fourth  day  after  their  marriage  she 
was  deciding,  though  a  little  reluctantly  for  she  had 
always  heard  them  praised,  that  probably  she  had  no 
gift  for  honeymoons. 

Robert,  luckily,  was  apparently  liking  his  and  was 
quite  happy  and  placid  and  slept  sonorously  in  the 
trains.  The  meals  were  invariably  cheerful.  From 
Bromberg  on  he  woke  up  and  became  attentive  to  the 
country  they  were  passing  through;  and  once  in  his 
own  part  of  the  world  he  expanded  into  much  talk, 
pointing  out  and  explaining  the  distinctive  features  of 
the  methods  employed  on  the  different  farms  along  the 
line. 

Ingeborg  drank  it  in  eagerly.  She  was  zealous  to 
learn;  resolute  io  be  a  helpmeet.  Had  he  not  delivered 
her  from  the  immense  suffocation  of  Redchester?  She 
was  obsequious  with  gratitude.  It  was  a  country  of 
an  exhilarating  spaciousness;  no  hedges,  no  shutting 
off  of  one  field  from  another,  no  shutting  off,  indeed,  of 

129 


130  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

the  sky  itself  or  of  the  blue  delicious  distance  by  little 
interfering  hills  like  those  they  had  round  Redchester. 
It  was  all  one  great  sweep,  one  great  roll  of  earth  up 
to  heaven  and  of  heaven  down  to  earth,  fresh  and  free 
and  with  a  quality  in  the  air  of  clear  bright  hardness 
she  thought  adorable  after  the  wadded  effect  of  the 
climate  at  home.  And  once,  when  the  train  pulled  up 
in  the  open,  she  could  hear  from  far  away  up  in  the 
blue  the  cry  of  a  hawk. 

From  Allenstein  they  went  on  by  a  light  railway 
with  toy  carriages  and  a  tiny  engine  through  an  in- 
finity of  rye-fields  and  seemingly  uninhabited  country 
to  the  nearest  station  to  Kokensee,  a  place  called  Meuk, 
of  some  pretension  to  being  a  little  town,  with  an 
enormous  church  rising  out  of  its  middle  and  contain- 
ing, among  other  objects  of  interest,  explained  Herr 
Dremmel,  his  mother. 

"Oh?"  said  Ingeborg,  surprised.  "Have  you  got 
one?  "  For  he  somehow  produced  a  completely  mother- 
less impression. 

"Invariably,  my  treasure,"  said  Herr  Dremmel  with 
patience,  "do  people  have  mothers." 

"Yes,"  she  said,  reaching  down  his  hat  for  him  and 
putting  it  carefully  on  his  head,  "but  then  they  say 
so." 

"Perhaps.  Sooner  or  later.  I  well  remember, 
however,  informing  you  that  my  father  was  dead. 
From  that  it  was  possible  to  reason  that  my  mother 
was  not.  She  is  a  simple  woman.  No  longer  young. 
We  will  visit  her  on  our  way  through  the  town." 

Outside  the  station  a  high  vehicle  drawn  by  two 
long-tailed  horses,  one  of  which  reached  a  head  and 
neck  further  than  the  other,  so  that  when  you  looked 
at  them  sideways  and  could  not  see  that  they  both 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  131 

began  at  the  same  place  it  seemed  to  be  perpetually 
winning  a  race,  was  in  readiness  to  take  them  to  Ko- 
kensee. 

"This,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  introducing  it  with  a 
wave  of  the  hand,  "is  my  carriage.  And  this,"  he 
continued,  similarly  introducing  the  driver,  "is  my 
faithful  servant  Johann.  He  has  been  with  me  now 
nearly  a  year." 

Ingeborg  shook  Johann's  hand,  when  he  had  care- 
fully clambered  down  over  the  sacks  of  kainit  that 
filled  the  front  part  of  the  carriage,  very  politely.  "Do 
they  all  stay  as  long  as  that?"  she  murmured  to  Herr 
Dremmel. 

"All?  There  is  but  my  widow,  and  she  is  adjusting 
her  feathers  for  flight.  She  will  wing  her  way  to  some 
other  bachelor  nest  as  soon  as  my  Little  One  has  been 
inducted." 

"But  does  she  like  that?"  asked  Ingeborg.  For 
she  had  acquired  a  habit,  due  to  much  repetition  of 
the  Litany,  of  regarding  widows  as  brittle,  needing 
special  care.  There  was  an  instant's  vision  before  her 
eyes  of  this  one  flapping  blackly  athwart  the  fields  of 
East  Prussia,  turned  out,  desolate  and  oppressed,  and 
with  perhaps  some  cackling  trail  of  curses  stridulously 
marking  her  course. 

"No  doubt  she  will  feel  it.  She,  too,  has  been  very 
faithful.  She  has  been  with  me  now  nearly  eight 
months.  But  if  it  were  less  she  would  still  feel  it. 
Widows,"  he  continued  abstractedly,  peering  among 
the  sacks  of  kainit  in  search  of  some  Chilisaltpetre 
that  was  not  there,  "are  in  a  constant  condition  of 
feeling." 

Johann  explained — he  was  a  shabby  man,  grown 
grey  and  frayed,  Ingeborg  supposed,  in  service — that 


132  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

the  previous  stuff  did  not  seem  to  have  caught  its  train, 
and  Herr  Dremmel  went  off  to  make  anxious  inquiries 
of  the  stationmaster  while  Ingeborg  stood  smiling  with 
an  excessive  friendliness  at  Johann  to  make  up  for  her 
want  of  words,  and  wondering  how  her  luggage  would 
get  on  to  a  carriage  already  so  much  occupied  by 
sacks. 

In  the  end  most  of  it  did  not  and  was  left  at  the 
station  till  some  future  time,  and  clutching  her  dressing- 
bag  with  one  hand  and  the  iron  rail  of  the  carriage  with 
the  other  she  was  rattled  away  over  the  enormous 
cobbles  of  Meuk  with  a  great  cracking  of  Johann's  whip 
and  barking  of  dogs  and  kickings  of  the  horses,  whose 
tails  were  long  and  kept  on  getting  over  the  reins.  The 
planks  of  the  carriage's  bottom  heaved  and  yawned  be- 
neath her  feet.  The  horses  shied  in  and  out  of  the 
gutters.  Her  hat  wanted  to  blow  off,  and  she  did  not 
dare  let  either  of  her  hands  go  free  to  hold  it.  She  bent 
her  head  to  try  to  keep  it  on.  Her  skin  pricked  and 
tingled  from  the  shaking.  She  had  an  impression  of 
red  houses  flush  with  the  street,  railless  dwellings  giving 
straight  on  to  it;  of  a  small  shop  or  two;  of  people  stop- 
ping to  stare;  of  straw  and  paper  and  dust  dancing  to- 
gether in  the  wind. 

Herr  Dremmel  chose  these  flustered  moments  to  ex- 
pand conversationally,  and  raising  his  voice  above  the 
tumult  explained  in  shouts  that  the  three  sacks  in 
front  were  not  so  much  sacks  as  mysterious  stomachs 
filled  with  the  future.  She  strained  to  catch  what  he 
said,  but  only  heard  a  word  now  and  then  when  she 
bumped  against  him — "divine  maws — richly  furnished 

banquet — potential  energy "  She  found  it  difficult 

to  answer  with  any  sort  of  connected  intelligence,  more 
especially  because  he  kept  on  breaking  off  to  lean  for- 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  133 

ward  and  hit  the  horse-flies  that  alighted  on  the  back 
of  Johann's  neck.  When  he  did  this  Johann  started 
and  the  horses  kicked. 

"Faithful  servant" — he  shouted  in  her  ear — "nearly 
a  year — must  not  be  stung " 

It  was  a  disorganized  and  breathless  Ingeborg  trying 
to  rub  things  out  of  her  eyes  who  found  herself  finally 
in  the  passage  of  the  elder  Frau  DremmeFs  house. 

The  door  stood  ajar,  and  her  husband  pushed  it 
open  and  called  loudly  on  his  mother  to  appear.  "She 
lurks,  she  lurks,"  he  said,  impatiently  looking  at  his 
watch;  and  redoubled  his  cries. 

"Does  she  expect  us?"  asked  Ingeborg  at  last,  who 
was  trying  to  pin  up  her  loosened  hair. 

"She  is  a  simple  woman,"  he  said,  "consequently 
she  never  expects  anything."  And  he  pulled  open  a 
door  out  of  which  came  nothing  but  darkness  and  a 
great  cold  smell. 

'That  is  not  my  mother,"  he  said,  shutting  it 
again. 

"Does  she  know  we're  coming  home  to-day?"  asked 
Ingeborg,  a  doubt  beginning  to  take  hold  of  her. 

"She  is  a  simple  woman.  Consequently  she  never 
knows  anything.     Mother!     Mother!" 

"Does  she  know  you're  married?"  asked  Ingeborg, 
the  doubt  growing  bigger. 

"She  is  a  simple  woman.     Consequently "     He 

broke  off  and  stared  down  at  her,  reflecting.  "Is  it 
possible  that  I  forgot  to  tell  her?"  he  said. 

It  evidently  was  possible,  for  at  that  moment  Frau 
Dremmel  came  slowly  up  some  steps  at  the  end  of  the 
passage  from  a  lower  region,  and  perceiving  her  son 
and  a  strange  young  woman  stood  still  and  said  nothing 
whatever. 


134  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"Mother,  this  is  my  wife,"  said  Herr  Dremmel, 
taking  Ingeborg's  hand  and  leading  her  to  the  motion- 
less figure. 

"Ach,"  said  Frau  Dremmel,  without  moving. 

"Kiss  her,  Little  One,"  directed  Herr  Dremmel. 

'Yes,  yes,"  said  Ingeborg,  blushing  a  vivid  red  and 
going  a  convulsive  step  nearer. 

Frau  Dremmel  was  regarding  her  with  sombre,  un- 
blinking eyes,  eyes  that  had  the  blankness  of  pebbles. 
From  her  waist  downwards  she  wore  a  big  dark-blue 
apron.  She  was  entirely  undecorated.  Her  black 
dress  ended  at  the  neck  abruptly  in  its  own  binding 
and  a  hook  and  eye.  Her  hair  was  drawn  back  into 
the  smallest  of  knobs.  Ingeborg  felt  suddenly  that 
she  herself  was  a  thing  of  fal-lals — a  showy  thing, 
bedizened  with  a  white  collar  and  a  hat  she  had  till 
then  considered  neat,  but  that  she  now  knew  for  a 
monstrous  piece  of  frippery  crushed  on  to  insufficiently 
pinned-up  hair. 

'You  are  married  to  her?"  asked  the  elder  Frau 
Dremmel,  turning  her  pebble  eyes  slowly  from  one  to 
the  other. 

''Undoubtedly,"  said  Herr  Dremmel;  and  to  Inge- 
borg, in  English,  "Kiss  her,  Little  One,  and  we  will  go 
on  home." 

He  himself  put  his  arm  round  his  mother's  shoulder 
and  gave  her  a  hasty  kiss. 

"My  wife  is  English,"  he  said.  "She  does  not  yet 
either  speak  or  understand  our  tongue.  Kiss  her, 
mother,  and  we  will  go  on  home." 

But  it  did  not  seem  possible  to  get  the  two  women 
to  kiss.  Ingeborg  went  another  shy  step  nearer.  Frau 
Dremmel  remained  immobile. 

"This,"  said  Frau  Dremmel,  moving  her  slow  eyes 


ARTHUR, 
LITUfe 


"You  are  married  to  her?"  asked  the  chirr  Fran  Drem i/iel . 
turn  i  in/  her  pebble  eyes  slowly  from  one  to  the  at  her 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  135 

over  Ingeborg  and  then  fixing  them  on  her  son,  "is  a 
pastor's  wife?" 

"  Undoubtedly.  I  regret  I  omitted  to  tell  you, 
mother,  but  one  does  occasionally  omit."  And,  in 
English  to  Ingeborg,  "She  is  a  simple  woman.  Con- 
sequently  " 

"But  I  heard,"  said  Frau  Dremmel.  "Through 
your  housekeeper.  And  others.  Thus  I  heard.  Of 
my  only  son's  marriage.     I  a  widow." 

Ingeborg,  not  understanding,  stood  smiling  ner- 
vously. She  thought  on  such  an  occasion  somebody 
ought  to  smile,  but  she  did  not  like  doing  it.  The  im- 
mobility of  Frau  Dremmel,  who  moved  nothing  but 
her  eyes,  the  dank  bare  passage,  the  rush  of  cold  smell 
that  had  escaped  out  of  the  one  door  in  it,  the  bleak 
air  of  poverty  about  her  mother-in-law — poverty  in 
some  strange  way  regarding  itself  as  virtuous  for  no 
reason  except  that  it  was  poor — did  not  make  her 
smiling  easy.  But  she  was  a  bride;  just  coming  home; 
just  being  introduced  to  her  husband's  people.  Some- 
body, she  felt,  on  such  an  occasion  must  smile,  and, 
trained  as  she  had  been  by  her  father  to  do  the  things 
no  one  else  wanted  to  do,  she  provided  all  the  smiling 
for  the  home-coming  entirely  herself. 

"Please,  Robert,  tell  your  mother  how  sorry  I  am 
I  can't  talk,"  she  said.  "Do  tell  her  I  wish  I  weren't 
so  dumb." 

'How  much  has  she?"  Frau  Dremmel  was  asking 
across  this  speech. 

''Enough,  enough,"  said  her  son,  putting  on  his  hat 
and  making  movements  of  departure. 

"Ah.  I  am  not  to  know.  More  secrets.  It  is  all 
to  go  in  further  unchristian  tampering  with  God's 
harvests." 


136  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

Herr  Dremmel  bestowed  a  second  abstracted  kiss 
somewhere  on  his  mother's  head.  He  had  not  listened 
to  anything  she  said  for  a  quarter  of  a  century. 

"Nothing  for  the  mother,"  she  went  on.  "No,  no. 
The  mother  is  only  a  widow.  She  is  of  no  account. 
Yet  your  sainted  father " 

"Farewell, and  God  be  with  you," said  Herr  Dremmel, 
departing  down  the  passage  and  forgetting  in  his  hurry 
to  get  his  bride  home  as  quickly  as  possible  to  take 
her  with  him. 

For  a  moment  she  was  left  alone  confronting  her 
new  relation.  She  made  a  great  plunge  into  filialness 
and,  swiftly  blushing,  picked  up  her  mother-in-law's 
passive  hand. 

She  had  meant  to  kiss  it,  but  looking  into  her  eyes 
she  found  kissing  finally  impossible.  She  shyly  mur- 
mured an  English  leave-taking  and  got  herself,  in- 
finitely awkwardly,  out  of  the  house. 

"One  has  to  have  them,"  was  Herr  Dremmel's  only 
comment. 

Kokensee  lay  three  miles  along  the  highroad  be- 
tween Meuk  and  Wiesenhausen,  and  they  could  see 
the  spire  of  its  little  church  over  the  fields  on  the  left 
the  whole  way.  The  road,  made  with  as  few  curves  as 
possible,  undulated  gently  up  and  down  between  rye- 
fields.  It  was  carefully  planted  on  each  side  with 
mountain  ashes,  on  that  day  in  full  flower,  and  was 
white  and  hard  as  though  there  had  been  no  rain  for  a 
long  while.  The  wind  blew  gaily  over  the  rye;  the 
sky  was  flecked  with  small  white  clouds.  Ingeborg 
could  see  for  miles.  And  there  were  dark  lines  of 
forest,  and  flashes  of  yellow  where  the  broom  grew, 
and  shining  bits  of  water,  and  larks  quivering  out  joy, 
and  everywhere  on  the  higher  places  busy  windmills, 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  137 

and  the  whole  world  seemed  to  laugh  and  flutter  and 
sing. 

"It's  beautiful — oh,  beautiful!"  she  said. 

"Beautiful?  I  tell  you  what  is  beautiful,  Little  One — 
the  fat  red  soil  of  your  girlhood's  home.  The  fat  red 
soil  and  the  steady  drip,  drip  of  the  heavens." 

And  he  bent  forward  and  inquired  of  Johann  when 
it  had  rained  last,  and  became  very  gloomy  on  hearing 
that  it  was  three  weeks  ago,  and  said  things  to  himself 
in  German.  They  seemed  to  be  unpastoral  things,  for 
Ingeborg  saw  Johann's  ears  lifted  up  by  what  was  evi- 
dently, in  the  front  of  his  face,  being  a  grin. 

A  weather-beaten  sign-post  with  one  bent  arm  pointed 
crookedly  down  a  field-track  at  right  angles  to  the 
road,  and  with  a  lurch  and  a  heave  they  tilted  round 
the  corner.  There  was  an  immediate  ceasing  of  sound. 
She  could  now  hear  all  sorts  of  little  birds  singing  be- 
sides larks — chaffinches,  tits,  yellow-hammers,  black- 
caps. The  carriage  ploughed  along  slowly  through  the 
deep  sand  between  rye  that  grew  more  reluctantly 
every  yard.  The  horses  were  completely  sobered  and 
covered  with  sweat.  Before  them  on  an  upward  slope 
was  Kokensee,  one  long  straggling  street  of  low  cottages 
lying  up  against  the  sunset,  its  church  behind  it,  and 
near  the  church  two  linden  trees  which  were  the  trees, 
she  knew  for  she  had  often  made  him  tell  her,  in  front 
of  her  home. 

Ingeborg  felt  a  quick  tug  at  her  heart.  Here  was 
the  place  containing  all  her  future.  There  was  nothing 
left  to  her  to  feel,  she  supposed,  that  she  would  not 
feel  here.  The  years  lay  spread  out  before  her,  spacious 
untouched  canvases  on  which  she  was  presently  going 
to  paint  the  picture  of  her  life.  It  was  to  be  a  very 
beautiful  picture,  she  said  to  herself  with  an  extraordi- 


138  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

nary  feeling  of  proud  confidence ;  not  beautiful  because 
of  any  gifts  or  skill  of  hers,  for  never  was  a  woman  more 
giftless,  but  because  of  all  the  untiring  little  touches, 
the  ceaseless  care  for  detail,  the  patient  painting  out  of 
mistakes;  and  every  touch  and  every  detail  was  going 
to  be  aglow  with  the  bright  colours  of  happiness.  Ex- 
ulting bits  out  of  the  Prayer-book,  the  book  she 
knew  altogether  best,  sang  in  her  ears — Lift  up  your 
hearts.  .  .  .  We  lift  them  up  unto  the  Lord  our  God. 
.  .  .  Oh,  the  beautiful  words,  the  beautiful  world,  the 
wonder  and  the  radiance  of  life! 

"When  the  Devil,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  who  had 
been  scanning  the  crops  on  either  side  of  the  track 
with  deepening  depression,  "took  our  Saviour  up  on 
to  a  high  place  to  tempt  him  with  the  offer  of  the  king- 
doms of  the  earth,  he  was  careful  to  hide  Kokensee 
by  keeping  his  tail  spread  out  over  it,  it  was  so  ugly 
and  so  undesirable." 

"Oh— the  Devil,"  said  Ingeborg,  shrugging  her 
shoulder  in  a  splendid  contempt,  her  face  still  shining 
with  what  she  had  been  thinking. 

She  turned  to  him  and  laughed.  "You  can't  expect 
devils  to  know  what's  what,"  she  said,  slipping  her 
hand  through  his  arm  and  throwing  up  her  head  in 
a  kind  of  proud  glee. 

He  smiled  down  at  her.  "Little  treasure,"  he  said, 
for  a  moment  becoming  conscious  that  this  was  a  very 
bright  thing  he  had  got  and  was  bringing  home  with 
him. 

The  carriage  was  hauled  up  through  an  opening 
between  two  cottages  out  of  the  sand  on  to  the  stones 
of  the  village  street  by  a  supreme  last  effort  of  the 
horses,  and  was  dragged  in  great  bumps  across  various 
defects  through  an  open  gate  on  the  opposite  side. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  139 

There  was  a  yard  with  sheds,  a  plough,  a  manure  heap, 
some  geese,  some  hens,  a  pig,  the  two  linden  trees, 
and  in  between  the  linden  trees  behind  wire  netting 
a  one-storied  house  like  a  venerable  bungalow,  which 
Herr  Dremmel,  on  their  drawing  up  in  front  of  it,  in- 
troduced to  her. 

"My  house,"  he  said,  with  a  wave  of  the  hand. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THERE  followed  a  time  of  surprising  happiness 
for  Ingeborg.  It  was  the  happiness  of  the  child 
escaped  from  its  lessons  and  picnicking  glori- 
ously in  freedom  and  unrebukedness.  The  widow,  it  is 
true,  slightly  smudged  the  brightness  of  the  beginning 
by,  as  it  were,  dying  hard.  Her  body  clung  to  life — 
the  life  she  had  known,  she  lamented,  for  eight  long 
months.  She  was  the  last,  she  explained,  of  the  Herr 
Pastor's  widows,  who  reached  back  in  a  rusty  row  to 
the  days  when  he  first  came,  elastic  with  youth,  to  cure 
the  souls  of  Kokensee,  and  as  she  had  stayed  the  longest 
it  was  clear  she  must  be  the  best.  She  remained  at  the 
parsonage,  dingily  persistent,  for  several  days  on  the 
pretext  of  initiating  Ingeborg  into  the  ways  of  the 
house;  and  each  time  Herr  Dremmel,  who  seemed  a 
little  shy  of  embarking  on  controversy  with  her,  men- 
tioned trains,  she  burst  in  his  presence  into  prayer  and 
implored  aloud  on  his  behalf  that  he  might  never  know 
what  it  was  to  be  a  widow.  She  did  ultimately,  how- 
ever, become  dislodged,  and  once  she  was  gone  there 
was  nothing  but  contentment. 

Ingeborg  was  young  enough  to  think  the  almost 
servantless  housekeeping  a  thing  of  charm  and  humour. 
Herr  Dremmel  was  of  the  easiest  unconcern  as  to 
what  or  when  or  if  he  ate.  It  was  early  summer,  and 
there  was  only  delight  in  getting  up  at  dawn  and 
pottering  about  the  brick-floored  kitchen  before  the 

no 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  141 

daily  servant  came — a  girl  known  to  Kokensee  as 
Miiller's  Use — and  heating  water,  and  making  coffee, 
and  preparing  a  very  clean  little  breakfast-table  some- 
where in  the  garden,  and  decorating  it  with  freshly 
picked  flowers,  and  putting  the  butter  on  young  leaves, 
and  arranging  the  jar  of  honey  so  that  a  shaft  of  sun- 
light between  the  branches  shone  straight  through  it 
turning  it  into  a  miracle  of  golden  light.  It  was  the 
sort  of  breakfast-table  one  reads  about  in  story  books; 
and  on  its  fragility  Herr  Dremmel  would  presently 
descend  like  some  great  geological  catastrophe,  and 
the  whole  in  a  few  convulsed  moments  would  be  just 
crumbs  and  coffee  stains.  Then  he  would  put  on 
leggings  and  go  off  with  Johann  to  his  experimental 
fields,  and  she  would  give  herself  up  eagerly  to  the 
duties  of  the  dav. 

She  could  not  talk  at  first  to  Use,  a  square  girl  with 
surprisingly  thick  legs,  because  though  she  went  about 
always  with  a  German  grammar  in  one  hand  she  found 
that  what  she  had  learned  was  never  what  she  wanted 
to  say.  Use,  whose  skirt  was  short,  did  not  wear  stock- 
ings, and  when  Ingeborg  by  pointing  and  producing  a 
pair  had  conveyed  to  her  that  it  would  be  well  if  she 
did,  Use  raised  her  voice  and  said  that  she  had  no 
money  to  get  a  husband  with  but  at  least,  and  Gott  sei 
Dank,  she  had  these  two  fine  legs,  and  if  the  Frau  Pastor 
demanded  that  she  should  by  hiding  them  give  up  her 
chances,  then  the  Frau  Pastor  had  best  seek  some  girl 
on  whom  they  grew  crooked  or  lean,  and  who  for  those 
reasons  would  only  be  too  glad  to  cover  them  up. 
Ingeborg,  not  understanding  a  word  but  apprehending 
a  great  objection,  smiled  benevolently  and  put  the 
stockings  away,  and  Use's  legs  went  on  being  bare. 
They   worked    together   in   great   harmony,    for   there 


142  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

could  be  no  argument.  Cut  off  from  conversation, 
they  sang;  and  Ingeborg  sang  hymns  because  her  mem- 
ory was  packed  with  them,  and  Use  sang  long  loud 
ballads,  going  through  them  slowly  verse  by  verse  in  a 
sort  of  steady  howl.  The  very  geese  paused  on  their 
way  to  the  pond  to  listen  anxiously. 

Dinner,  which  Ingeborg  found  convenient  to  prepare 
entirely  in  one  pot,  simmered  placidly  on  the  stove 
from  twelve  o'clock  onwards.  Anybody  who  was 
hungry  went  and  ate  it.  You  threw  in  potatoes  and 
rice  and  bits  of  meat  and  carrots  and  cabbages  and  fat 
and  salt,  and  there  you  were.  What  are  these  mys- 
terious difficulties  of  housekeeping,  she  asked  herself, 
that  people  shake  their  heads  over?  Her  dinners  were 
wholesome  always,  delicious  if  one  were  hungry,  and 
quite  amazingly  hot.  They  stayed  hot  as  persis- 
tently as  poultices.  And  once  when  Use  had  the  mis- 
fortune to  be  stung  by  a  wasp  on  one  of  her  admirable 
legs,  Ingeborg,  with  immense  presence  of  mind,  seized 
the  dinner  and  emptying  it  into  a  fair  linen  cloth 
bound  it  over  the  swollen  place;  so  that  when  Herr 
Dremmel  arrived,  as  it  happened  hungrily  that  day, 
about  two  o'clock  and  asked  for  his  dinner,  he  was  told 
it  was  on  Use's  leg  and  had  to  eat  sandwiches.  He 
could  not  but  admire  the  resourcefulness  of  Ingeborg; 
but  it  was  not  until  he  had  eaten  several  sandwiches 
that  he  was  able  still  to  say,  as  he  patted  her  shoulder, 
"Little  treasure." 

It  was  the  busiest,  happiest  time.  Every  minute 
of  the  day  was  full.  It  was  life  at  first  hand,  not 
drained  dry  of  its  elemental  excellences  by  being 
squeezed  first  through  the  medium  of  servants.  To 
have  a  little  kitchen  all  to  yourself,  to  be  really  mistress 
of  every  corner  of  your  house,  to  watch  the  career  of 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  143 

your  food  from  its  very  beginning,  to  run  out  into  the 
garden  and  pull  up  anything  you  happened  to  want, 
to  stand  at  the  back  door  with  your  skirt  full  of  grain 
and  call  your  own  chickens  round  you  and  feed  them, 
to  go  yourself  and  look  for  eggs,  to  fill  the  funny  little 
dark  rooms  with  flowers  and  measure  the  stone-floored 
passage  for  a  drugget  you  would  presently  order  in 
the  only  carpet  shop  you  had  faith  in,  which  was  the 
one  in  Redchester — what  pleasures  did  the  world  con- 
tain that  could  possibly  come  up  to  these?  Things 
were  a  little  untidy,  but  what  did  that  matter?  It 
was  possible  to  become  the  slave  of  things;  possible  to 
miss  life  in  preparation  for  living. 

And  the  weather  was  so  beautiful — at  least,  Inge- 
borg  thought  it  was.  There  was  the  hottest  sun,  and 
the  coolest  wind,  and  bright,  clear-skied  starry  nights. 
It  is  true  Robert,  when  he  scanned  the  naked  heavens 
the  last  thing  at  night  and  peered  at  the  thermometer 
outside  his  window  the  first  thing  in  the  morning,  said 
it  was  the  Devil's  own  weather,  and  that  if  there  was 
not  soon  some  rain  all  his  fertilizers,  all  his  activities, 
all  his  expenditure  would  be  wasted;  but  though  this 
would  throw  a  shadow  for  a  moment  across  her  joy  in 
each  new  wonderful  morning  she  found  it  impossible 
not  to  rejoice  in  the  light.  Out  in  the  garden,  for 
instance,  down  there  beyond  the  lime-trees  at  the  end, 
where  you  could  stand  in  the  gap  in  the  lilac  hedge 
and  look  straight  out  across  the  rye-fields,  the  immense 
unending  rye-fields,  dipping  and  rising,  delicate  grey, 
delicate  green,  shining  in  sunlight,  dark  beneath  a 
cloud,  restlessly  waving,  on  and  on,  till  over  away  at 
the  end  of  things  they  got  to  the  sky  and  were  only 
stopped  by  brushing  up  against  it — out  there  with 
one's  hand  shading  one's  eyes  from  the  too  great  bright- 


144  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

ness,  who  could  find  fault  with  anything,  who  could  do 
anything  but  look  and  see  that  it  was  all  very  good? 
Oh,  but  it  was  good.  It  made  one  want  to  sing  the 
Te  Deum,  or  the  Magnificat,  or  still  better  that  hymn 
of  exultation,  We  praise  Thee,  we  bless  Thee,  we  worship 
Thee,  we  glorify  Thee,  we  give  thanks  to  Thee  for  Thy 
great  glory.     .     .     . 

Whenever  there  was  a  spare  half  hour,  such  as  be- 
tween where  dinner  ended  and  tea  began,  she  would 
run  out  to  the  lime-trees,  and  pacing  up  and  down  that 
leafy  place  with  the  gooseberry  bushes  and  vegetables 
and  straggling  accidental  flowers  of  the  garden  lying 
hotly  in  the  sun  between  her  and  the  back  of  the  house, 
she  learned  German  words  by  heart.  She  learned  them 
aloud  from  her  grammar,  saying  them  over  and  over 
again  glibly,  mechanically,  while  her  thoughts  danced 
about  the  future,  from  the  immediate  future  of  what 
she  would  do  to-morrow,  the  future  of  an  afternoon 
in  the  punt  among  the  reeds  and  perhaps  paddling 
along  to  where  the  forest  began,  to  the  more  responsible 
vaguer  future  of  further  down  the  months,  when,  armed 
with  German,  she  would  begin  among  the  poor  and  go 
out  into  the  parish  and  make  friends  with  the  peasants 
and  be  a  real  pastor's  wife.  Particularly  she  wished 
to  get  nearer  her  mother-in-law.  It  seemed  to  her  to 
be  her  first  duty  to  get  near  her.  Ceaselessly  she  trotted 
up  and  down  repeating  the  German  for  giants,  um- 
brellas, keys,  spectacles,  wax,  fingers,  thunder,  beards, 
princes,  boats,  and  shoulders.  Ceaselessly  her  lips 
moved,  while  her  eyes  followed  the  movements  of  the 
birds  darting  in  and  out  of  the  lilac  hedge  and  hopping 
among  the  crumbs  where  breakfast  had  been;  and 
through  her  giants,  umbrellas,  keys,  spectacles,  and 
wax  she  managed  not  to  miss  a  word  the  yellow-ham- 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  145 

mers  were  chirping  to  each  other  in  cheerful  strophe 
and  antistrophe :  A  little  bit  of  bread  and  no  che-e-e-e-e-ese 
— a  little  bit  of  bread  and  no  che-e-e-e-e-ese. 

At  four  she  would  go  in  and  make  some  coffee  by 
the  simple  method  of  uniting  the  coffee  to  hot  water 
and  leaving  them  to  settle  down  together  on  the  mat 
outside  the  laboratory's  locked  door.  Herr  Dremmel 
did  not  wish  to  be  disturbed  once  he  was  in  there,  and 
she  would  steal  down  the  passage  on  tip-toe,  biting  her 
under-lip  in  the  intentness  of  her  care  that  no  rattling 
of  the  things  on  the  tray  should  reach  his  ears. 

When  he  was  in  the  house  all  singing  ceased.  She 
arranged  that  Use  should  do  her  outdoor  duties  then- 
clean  out  the  hen-house,  milk  the  cow  whether  it  wanted 
to  be  milked  or  not,  and  minister  to  the  pig.  Johann 
was  away  all  day  at  the  experiment  ground,  and  Use 
waded  about  the  farmyard  mess  with  her  bare  legs, 
thoroughly  enjoying  herself,  for  no  one  ever  scolded 
her  whatever  she  did,  and  the  yard  was  separated  from 
the  village  street  only  by  a  low  fence,  and  the  early 
manhood  of  Kokensee,  as  it  passed,  could  pause  and 
lean  on  this  and  learn  from  her  manner  of  solacing  the 
pig  the  comfortableness  of  the  solacements  awaiting 
her  husband. 

At  seven  Use  went  home,  and  Ingeborg  prepared  a 
supper  so  much  like  breakfast  that  nobody  could  have 
told  it  was  evening  and  not  morning  except  that  the  ray 
of  sunshine  fell  through  the  honey  from  the  west  instead 
of  the  east,  and  there  was  cheese.  At  this  meal  Herr 
Dremmel,  full  of  his  fertilizers,  was  mostly  in  a  profound 
abstraction.  He  drank  the  coffee  with  which  he  was 
becoming  saturated  and  ate  great  slices  of  bread  and 
cheese  in  an  impenetrable  silence.  Ingeborg  sat  throw- 
ing   crumbs   to   the   birds   and    watching    the   sky   at 


146  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

the  edge  of  the  world  grow  first  a  mighty  red,  then 
fade,  then  light  up  into  clear  green;  and  long  after  the 
shadows  beneath  the  lime-trees  were  black  and  the  stars 
and  the  bats  were  out  and  the  frogs  down  in  the  reeds 
of  the  lake  and  the  occasional  creaking  of  the  village 
pump  were  all  that  one  could  hear  outside  the  im- 
mense stillness,  they  would  go  on  sitting  there,  Herr 
Dremmel  silently  smoking,  Ingeborg  silently  making 
plans. 

Sometimes  she  would  get  up  and  cross  over  to  him 
and  bend  her  face  down  close  to  his  and  try  in  the  dark 
to  explore  his  eyes  with  hers.  "The  noise  you  make!" 
she  would  say,  brushing  a  kiss,  so  much  used  does 
marriage  make  one  to  what  once  has  seemed  impossible, 
across  the  top  of  his  hair;  and  he  would  wake  up  and 
smile  and  pat  her  shoulder  and  tell  her  she  was  a  good 
little  wife. 

Then  she  felt  proud.  It  was  just  what  she  wanted 
to  be — a  good  little  wife.  She  wanted  to  give  satis- 
faction, to  be  as  helpful  to  him  as  she  had  been  to  her 
father  in  the  days  before  her  disgrace;  and  more  help- 
ful, for  he  was  so  much  kinder,  he  was  so  dear.  For 
this  extraordinary  happiness,  for  this  delicious  safety 
from  disapproval,  for  these  free,  fearless,  wonderful  days, 
she  would  give  in  return  all  she  had,  all  she  was,  all  she 
could  teach  herself  and  train  herself  to  be. 

Nearly  always  Herr  Dremmel  went  back  to  his 
laboratory  about  ten  and  worked  till  after  midnight; 
and  she  would  lie  awake  in  the  funny  bare  bedroom 
across  the  passage  as  long  as  she  could  so  as  not  to  miss 
too  much  of  life  by  being  asleep,  smelling  with  the 
delight  delicate  sweet  smells  gave  her  the  various  fra- 
grances of  the  resting  garden.  And  the  stars  blinked  in 
through  the  open  window,  and  she  could  see  the  faint 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  147 

whiteness  of  a  bush  of  guelder  roses  against  the  curtain 
of  the  brooding  night.  When  Herr  Dremmel  came  in 
he  shut  the  window. 

On  Sundays  there  was  a  service  at  two  o'clock  once 
a  fortnight.    On  the  alternating  Sundays  Herr  Dremmel 
was  driven  by  Johann  to  another  village  three  miles 
distant  which  was  part  of  his  scattered  parish,  and  here 
he  preached  the  sermon  he  had  preached  to  Kokensee 
the  Sunday  before.     He  practised  a  rigorous  economy 
in  sermons;    and  it  had  this  advantage  that  an  en- 
thusiast— only   there   was   no   enthusiast — by   waiting 
a  week  and  walking  three  miles,  most  of  which  was  deep 
sand,  might  hear  again  anything  that  had  struck  him 
the  previous  week.     By  waiting  a  year,   indeed,  the 
same  enthusiast,  supposing  him  there,  could  hear  every- 
thing  again,    for   Herr   Dremmel's  sermons  numbered 
twenty-six  and  were  planned  to  begin  on  January  1st 
with  the  Circumcision,  and  leaping  along  through  the 
fortnights  of  the  year  ended  handsomely  and  irregularly 
with  an  extra  one  at  Christmas.     However  inattentive 
a  member  of  the  congregation  might  be,  as  the  years 
passed  over  him  he  knew  the  sermons.     They   were 
sermons  weighty,  according  to  the  season,  either  with 
practical  advice  or  with  wrathful  expositions  of  duty. 
There  was  one  every  year  when  the  threshing  time  was 
at  hand  on  the  text  Micah  iv.  13,  Arise   and   thresh, 
explaining  with  patient  exactitude  the  newest  methods 
of  doing  it.     There  was  the  annual  Harvest  Thanks- 
giving sermon  on  Matthew  xiii.,  part  of  verse  26,  Tares, 
after  yet  another  year  of  the  congregation's  obstinate 
indifference  to  chemical  manure.    There  was  the  sermon 
on  Jeremiah  ix.  22,  Is  there  no  physician  there?    preached 
yearly  on  one  of  the  later  Sundays  in  Trinity  when  the 
cold,  continuous  rains  of  autumn  were  finding  out  the 


148  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

weak  spots  in  the  parish's  grandparents,  and  the  peasants, 
having  observed  that  once  one  called  in  a  doctor  the 
sick  person  got  better  and  one  had  to  pay  the  doctor 
into  the  bargain,  evaded  calling  him  in  if  they  possibly 
could,  inquiring  of  each  other  gloomily  how  one  was  to 
live  if  death  were  put  a  stop  to.  And  there  was  the  Ad- 
vent sermon  when  the  annual  slaughter  of  pigs  drew 
near,  on  Isaiah  lxv.,  part  of  the  4th  verse,  Swine's  flesh. 

This  sermon  filled  the  church.  In  spite  of  the  poor 
opinion  of  pigs  in  both  the  Old  and  New  Testaments, 
where,  Herr  Dremmel  found  on  searching  for  a  text, 
they  were  hardly  mentioned  except  as  convenient  re- 
ceptacles for  devils,  in  his  parishioners'  lives  they  pro- 
vided the  nearest,  indeed  the  only,  approach  to  the 
finer  emotions,  to  gratitude,  love,  wonder.  The  peasant, 
watching  this  pink  chalice  of  his  future  joys,  this  myste- 
rious moving  crucible  into  which  whatever  dreary  dregs 
and  leavings  he  threw,  uttermost  dregs  of  uttermost 
dregs  that  even  his  lean  dog  would  not  touch,  they  still 
by  Christmas  emerged  as  sausages,  could  not  but  feel 
at  least  some  affection,  at  least  some  little  touch  of  awe. 
While  his  relations  were  ill  and  having  to  have  either 
a  doctor  or  a  funeral  and  sometimes,  rousing  him  to 
fury,  both,  or  if  not  ill  were  well  and  requiring  food  and 
clothing,  his  pig  walked  about  pink  and  naked,  giving 
no  trouble,  needing  no  money  spent  on  it,  placidly 
transmuting  into  the  fat  of  future  feastings  that  which 
without  it  would  have  become,  in  heaps,  a  source  of 
flies  and  corruption.  Herr  Dremmel  on  pigs  was  full 
of  intimacy  and  local  warmth.  He  was  more — he 
was  magnificent.  It  was  the  sermon  in  the  year  which 
never  failed  to  fill  every  seat,  and  it  was  the  one  day  on 
which  Kokensee  felt  its  pastor  thoroughly  understood  it. 

Ingeborg  went  diligently  to  church  whenever  there 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  149 

was  church  to  go  to.  She  explained  to  Herr  Dremmel 
that  she  held  it  to  be  her  duty  as  the  pastor's  wife  to 
set  an  example  in  this  matter,  and  he  pinched  her  ear 
and  replied  that  it  might  possibly  be  good  for  her 
German.  He  seemed  to  think  nothing  of  her  duty  as 
a  pastor's  wife;  and  when  she  suggested  that  perhaps 
she  ought  to  begin  and  go  the  rounds  of  the  cottages 
and  not  wait  for  greater  stores  of  language,  he  only 
remarked  that  little  women's  duty  is  to  make  their  hus- 
bands happy. 

"But  don't  I?"  she  asked  confidently,  seizing  his 
coat  in  both  her  hands. 

"Of  course.     See  how  sleek  I  become." 
"And  I  can  do  something  besides  that." 
"Nothing  so  good.     Nothing  half  so  good." 

"But  Robert,  one  thing  doesn't  exclude " 

Herr  Dremmel  had  already,  however,  ceased  to  listen. 
His  thoughts  had  slid  off  again.  She  seemed  to  sit  in 
his  mind  on  the  top  of  a  slope  up  which  he  occasionally 
clambered  and  caressed  her.  Eagerly  on  these  visits 
she  would  buttonhole  him  with  talk  and  ask  him  ques- 
tions so  that  he  might  linger,  but  even  while  she  button- 
holed his  gaze  would  become  abstracted  and  off  he  slid, 
leaving  her  peering  after  him  over  the  edge  filled  with 
a  mixture  of  affection,  respect  for  his  work,  pride  in 
him,  and  amusement. 

You  might  as  well  try,  she  thought,  to  buttonhole 
water;  and  she  would  laugh  and  go  back  to  whatever 
she  was  doing  with  a  blithe  feeling  that  it  was  very 
ideal,  this  perfect  independence  of  one  another,  this 
spaciousness  of  freedom  to  do  exactly  what  each  one 
liked.  The  immense  tracts  of  time  she  had!  How 
splendid  this  leisure  was  after  the  close  detail  of  every 
hour  at  home  in  her  father's  study.    When  she  had  got 


150  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

over  the  first  difficulties  of  German  and  need  no  longer 
devote  most  of  her  day  to  it  she  would  get  books  from 
England  and  read  and  read;  all  the  ones  she  had 
wanted  to  read  but  had  not  been  allowed  to.  Oh,  the 
magnificence  of  marriage,  thought  Ingeborg,  beating  her 
hands  together,  the  splendour  of  its  liberations!  She 
would  go  off  in  the  morning  with  the  punt  full  of  books, 
and  spend  long  glorious  days  away  in  theJorest  lying  on 
the  green  springy  carpet  of  whortleberrie^  reading.  She 
would  most  diligently  work  at  furnishing  her  empty  mind. 
She  would  sternly  endeavour  to  train  it  not  to  jump. 

All  the  books  she  possessed  she  had  brought  with 
her  and  spread  over  the  living-room:  the  wedding- 
presents  which  had  enriched  her  with  Hardy  and 
Meredith  and  Kipling  and  Tennyson  and  Ruskin,  and 
her  own  books  she  had  had  as  a  girl.  These  were  three, 
the  Christian  Year,  given  to  her  on  her  confirmation  by 
her  father,  Longfellow's  Poems,  given  her  on  her 
eighteenth  birthday  by  her  mother,  and  Dumas' 
Tulipe  Noire,  given  her  as  a  prize  for  French  because 
Judith  did  not  know  any,  one  summer  when  a  French 
governess  was  introduced  (thoughtlessly,  the  Bishop 
said  afterwards)  into  the  Palace.  This  lady  had  been 
removed  from  the  Palace  again  a  little  later  with  care, 
every  corner  of  her  room  being  scrupulously  disinfected 
by  the  searching  of  Richards  who  found,  however,  noth- 
ing except  one  book  in  a  yellow  paper  cover  called  Bibi  et 
Lulu:  Mwurs  du  Montparnasse;  and  even  this  was 
not  in  her  room  at  all,  but  in  Judith's,  beneath  some 
stockings. 

Herr  Dremmel  took  up  one  of  the  wedding  volumes 
when  first  he  saw  them  in  the  sitting-room  and  turned 
its  pages.  It  was  The  Shaving  of  Shagpat.  "Tut,  tut," 
he  said  presently,  putting  it  down. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  151 

"Why,  Robert?"  asked  Ingeborg,  eager  to  hear 
what  he  thought.  But  he  patted  her  abstractedly, 
already  slid  off  again  down  into  regions  of  reality,  the 
regions  in  which  his  brain  incessantly  worked  out 
possible  chemical  combinations  and  forgot  with  a  com- 
pleteness that  sometimes  even  surprised  himself  that  he 
had  a  wife.  Invariably,  however,  he  found  it  pleasant 
on  re-emerging  to  remember  her. 

She  asked  to  be  shown  his  experimental  fields,  and 
he  took  her  with  him  very  amiably  one  hot  morning, 
promising  to  explain  them  to  her;  but  instantly  on 
reaching  them  he  became  absorbed,  and  after  she  had 
spent  an  hour  sitting  on  a  stone  at  the  edge  of  a  strip 
of  lupins  beneath  a  haggard  little  fir  tree  which  gave 
the  solitary  bit  of  shade  in  that  burning  desert  watch- 
ing him  going  up  and  down  the  different  strips  examin- 
ing apparently  every  single  plant  with  Johann,  she 
began  to  think  she  had  better  go  home  and  look  after 
the  dinner,  and  waving  a  good-bye  to  him,  which  he  did 
not  see,  she  went. 

A  day  or  two  later  she  asked  whether  it  would  not 
be  good  and  pleasant  that  his  mother  should  come  over 
to  tea  with  them  soon. 

He  replied  amiably  that  it  would  be  neither  good  nor 
pleasant. 

She  asked  whether  it  might  not  be  a  duty  of  theirs  to 
invite  her. 

He  replied,  after  consideration,  "Perhaps." 

She  asked  whether  he  did  not  love  his  mother. 

He  replied  unhesitatingly,  "No." 

She  then  went  and  sat  on  his  knee  and  caught  hold 
of  his  ears  and  pulled  his  head  up  so  that  he  should 
look  at  her. 

"But  Robert "  she  said. 


152  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"Well,  little  sheep?" 

Since  their  marriage  he  had  instinctively  left  off 
calling  her  a  lamb.  The  universe,  which  for  a  time  she 
had  managed  to  reduce  into  just  a  setting  for  one  little 
female  thing,  had  arranged  itself  into  its  proper  lines 
again;  the  lamb  had  become  a  sheep — a  little  one,  but 
yet  no  longer  and  never  again  a  lamb.  He  was  glad  he 
had  been  able  to  be  so  thoroughly  inwove.  He  was 
glad  he  had  so  promptly  applied  the  remexly  of  marriage. 
His  affection  for  his  wife  was  quite  satisfactory:  it  was 
calm,  it  was  deep,  it  interfered  with  nothing.  She  held 
the  honourable  position  he  had  always,  even  at  his 
most  enamoured  moments,  known  she  would  ultimately 
fill,  the  position  next  best  in  his  life  after  the  fertilizers. 
His  house,  so  long  murky  with  widows,  was  now  a  bright 
place  because  of  her.  Approaching  poetry,  he  likened 
her  to  a  little  flitting  busy  bird  in  spring.  Always  he 
was  pleased  when  she  came  and  perched  on  his  knee. 

"Well,  little  sheep?"  he  said,  smiling  at  her  as  she 
looked  very  close  into  his  eyes. 

Her  face,  seen  so  near,  was  charming  in  its  delicate 
detail,  in  its  young  perfection  of  texture  and  colouring. 
Scrutinizing  her  eyes  he  was  glad  to  notice  once  again 
how  intelligent  they  were.  Presently  there  would  be 
sturdy  boys  tumbling  about  the  garden  with  eyes  like 
that,  grey  and  honest  and  intelligent.  His  boys. 
Carrying  on,  far  more  efficiently,  the  work  he  had 
begun. 

"Well,  little  sheep?"  he  said,  suddenly  moved. 

"Oughtn't  one  to  love  one's  mother?"  she  asked. 

"Perhaps.     But  one  does  not.     Do  you?" 

"Oh,  poor  mother "  said  Ingeborg  quickly. 

Her  mother,  far  away,  was  already  becoming  a 
rather  sad  and  a  quite  tender  memory.    All  those  days 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  153 

and  years  on  a  sofa,  and  all  the  days  and  years  still  to 
come.  .  .  .  Now  she  knew  better,  now  that  she  was 
married  herself,  what  it  must  have  been  like  to  be 
married  to  the  Bishop,  to  have  twenty  years  of  un- 
adulterated Bishop.  She  no  longer  wondered  at  the 
sofa.     She  was  full  of  understanding  and  pity. 

"One  does,  no  doubt,  at  the  beginning,"  said  Herr 
Dremmel. 

"And  then  leaves  off?  Is  that  all  children  are  born 
for,  that  they  may  leave  off  loving  us?" 

He  became  cautious.  He  talked  of  the  general  and 
the  individual.  Of  many  mothers  and  some  mothers. 
Of  the  mothers  of  the  present  generation — he  called 
them  the  Gewesene — and  the  mothers  of  the  generation 
to  be  born — he  called  them  the  Werdende.  And  pres- 
ently, as  she  sat  rather  enigmatically  silent  on  his  knee, 
he  developed  affection  for  his  mother,  explaining  that 
no  doubt  it  had  always  been  there,  but  like  many  other 
good  things  when  life  was  busy  and  a  man  had  little 
time  to  go  back  and  stir  them  had  lain  dormant,  and 
he  now  thought,  indeed  he  recognised,  that  it  would 
be  excellent  to  urge  her  to  come  over  soon  and  spend 
an  afternoon — or  still  better  a  morning. 

"But  you're  not  here  in  the  morning,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"Ah — that  is  true.  I  am  present,  however,  at  dinner." 

"But  nobody  ever  knows  when." 

"I  might,  perhaps,  arrive  early." 

In  this  way  the  elder  Frau  Dremmel,  who  had  her 
pride  to  consider  as  the  widow  of  her  neglectful  son's 
traditionally  appreciative  father,  and  who  would  con- 
sequently never  have  taken  what  she  called  in  her 
broodings  the  first  step,  did,  about  seven  weeks  after 
the  marriage,  cross  the  threshold  of  her  daughter-in- 
law's  home. 


CHAPTER    XIV 

THE  visit  was  arranged  to  begin  the  following 
Friday  at  four,  for  Ingeborg  thcfught  the  after- 
noon feeling  was  altogether  more  favourable  to 
warmth  than  anything  you  were  likely  to  get  before 
midday,  and  Johann  drove  in  to  Meuk  to  fetch  Frau 
Dremmel  in  time  for  that  hour. 

There  was  to  be  tea  out  in  the  garden  the  first  thing, 
because  tea  lubricates  the  charities,  and  then,  with 
the  aid  of  a  dictionary,  conversation.  Ingeborg  had 
had  time  to  think  out  her  mother-in-law,  and  was  firm 
in  her  resolve  that  no  artificial  barrier  such  as  language 
should  stand  in  the  way  of  the  building  up  of  affection. 
If  necessary  she  might  even  weave  the  German  for 
giants,  umbrellas,  keys,  and  spectacles  into  a  sentence 
as  a  conversational  opening,  and  try  her  mother-in-law 
with  that;  and  if  Frau  Dremmel  showed  the  least 
responsiveness  to  either  of  these  subjects  she  might  go 
on  to  wax,  fingers,  thunder,  and  beards,  and  end  with 
princes,  boats,  and  shoulders.  That  would  be  three 
sentences.  She  could  not  help  thinking  they  would 
be  pregnant  with  conversational  possibilities.  There 
would  be  three  replies;  and  Frau  Dremmel,  being  in 
her  own  language,  would  of  course  enlarge.  Then 
Ingeborg  would  open  her  dictionary  and  look  up  the 
words  salient  in  the  enlargement,  and  when  she  had 
found  them  smile  back,  brightly  comprehending  and 
appreciative. 

154 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  155 

This,  including  having  tea,  would  take,  she  supposed, 
about  fifty  minutes. 

Then  they  would  walk  a  little  up  and  down  in  the 
shade,  pointing  out  the  rye-field  to  each  other,  and  that 
would  be  another  ten  minutes  perhaps. 

Then  at  five,  she  supposed,  Frau  Dremmel  would 
ask  for  and  obtain  the  carriage  and  go  away  again. 
Ingeborg  made  up  her  mind  to  kiss  her  at  the  end  when 
the  visit  had  reached  the  door-step  stage.  It  would  not 
be  difficult,  she  thought.  The  door-step,  she  well  knew, 
was  a  place  of  enthusiasms. 

She  and  Use  were  immensely  active  the  whole  morn- 
ing preparing,  both  of  them  imbued  with  much  the 
same  spirit  with  which  as  children  they  prepared  parties 
for  their  dolls.  But  this  was  a  live  doll  who  was  coming, 
and  they  were  making  real  cakes  which  she  would 
actually  eat.  The  cakes  were  of  a  variety  of  shapes, 
or  rather  contortions,  the  coffee  was  of  a  festival  po- 
tency, sandwiches  meant  to  be  delicate  and  slender  were 
cut,  but  under  the  very  knife  grew  bulky — it  must  be 
the  strong  German  air,  Ingeborg  thought  watching 
them,  perplexed  by  this  conduct — and  there  were  the 
first  gooseberries. 

When  the  table  was  set  out  under  the  lime-trees 
and  finished  off  with  a  jug  of  roses  she  gazed  at  her 
work  in  admiration.  And  the  further  she  got  away 
from  it  the  more  delightful  it  looked.  Nearer  it  was 
still  attractive  but  more  with  the  delusive  attractive- 
ness of  tables  at  a  school  treat.  Perhaps  there  was  too 
much  food,  she  thought;  perhaps  it  was  the  immense 
girth  of  the  sandwiches.  But  down  from  the  end  of 
the  path  it  looked  so  charming  that  she  wished  she 
could  paint  it  in  watereolours — the  great  trees,  the 
tempered  sunlight,  the  glimpse  of  the  old  church  at 


156  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

one  end,  the  glimpse  of  the  embosomed  lake  at  the 
other,  and  in  the  middle,  set  out  so  neatly,  with  such 
a  grace  of  spotlessness,  the  table  of  her  first  tea- 
party. 

Frau  Dremmel  arrived  in  a  black  bonnet  with  a 
mauve  flower  in  its  front  to  mark  that  ten  years  had 
been  at  work  upon  the  mitigation  of  her  grief.  Her  son 
came  out  of  his  laboratory  when  he  heard  the  crashes 
of  the  carriage  among  the  stones  and  holes  of  the 
village  street,  and  he  was  ready  at  the  door  to  help 
her  down.  He  was  altogether  silent,  for  he  had  been 
torn  from  the  middle  of  counting  and  weighing  the 
grains  in  samples  of  differently  treated  rye,  and  would 
have  to  begin  the  last  saucerful  all  over  again.  Beside 
this  brevity  Ingeborg,  in  a  white  frock  and  wearing  the 
buckled  shoes  of  youth,  with  the  sun  shining  on  her 
freckled  fairness  and  bare  neck  and  her  mouth  framed 
into  welcoming  smiles,  looked  like  a  child.  She  certainly 
did  not  look  like  anybody's  wife;  and  the  last  thing  in 
the  world  that  she  at  all  resembled  was  the  wife  of  a 
German  pastor. 

Again  Frau  Dremmel,  as  she  had  done  that  day  at 
Meuk,  turned  her  eyes  slowly  all  over  her  while  she  was 
receiving  her  son's  abstracted  kiss;  but  she  said  nothing 
except,  to  her  son,  Guten  Tag,  and  passively  submitted 
to  Ingeborg's  shaking  both  her  hands,  which  were 
clothed  in  the  black  cotton  of  decent  widowhood. 

"Do  say  something,  Robert,"  murmured  Ingeborg. 
"Say  how  glad  I  am.  Say  all  the  things  I'd  say  if  I 
could  say  things." 

Herr  Dremmel  gazed  at  his  wife  a  moment  collecting 
his  thoughts. 

"Why  should  one  say  anything?"  he  said.  "She 
is  a  simple  woman.    No  longer  young.    My  wife,"  he 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  157 

said  to  his  mother,  "desires  me  to  welcome  you  on  her 
behalf." 

"y4c/i,"  said  Frau  Dremmel. 

Ingeborg  began  to  usher  her  along  the  passage  to- 
wards the  back  door  and  the  garden.  Frau  Dremmel, 
however,  turned  aside  halfway  down  it  into  the  living- 
room  . 

"Oh,  not  in  there!"  cried  Ingeborg.  "We're  going 
to  have  tea  in  the  garden.    Robert,  please  tell  her— — 

But  looking  round  for  help  she  found  Robert  had 
gone,  and  there  was  the  sound  of  a  key  being  turned  in 
a  lock. 

Frau  Dremmel  continued  to  enter  the  living-room. 
Before  she  could  be  stopped  she  had  arranged  herself 
firmly  on  its  sofa. 

"But  tea,"  said  Ingeborg,  following  her  and  ges- 
ticulating, "tea,  you  know.  Out  there — in  the 
garden " 

She  pointed  to  the  door,  and  she  pointed  to  the 
window.  Frau  Dremmel  slowly  took  off  her  gloves 
and  rolled  them  together,  and  undid  her  bonnet  strings 
and  looked  at  the  door  and  at  the  window  and  back 
again  at  her  daughter-in-law,  but  did  not  move.  Then 
Ingeborg,  making  a  great  effort  at  gay  cordiality  and 
determined  that  when  words  failed  affectionate  actions 
should  fill  up  the  gaps,  bent  over  the  figure  on  the  sola 
and  took  its  arm.  "Won't  you  come?"  she  said,  add- 
ing a  sentence  she  had  taken  special  pains  to  get  by 
heart,  ''Hebe  SchvriegermuUer?"  And  smilingly,  but  yet, 
when  it  came  to  touching  her,  rather  gingerly,  and 
certainly  with  her  heart  in  her  mouth,  she  gently  pulled 
at  her  sleeve. 

Frau  Dremmel  stared  up  at  her  without  moving. 

"  Liebe  Schwiegermutter-   tea-garden — better,"  said 


158  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

Ingeborg,  still  smiling  but  now  quite  hot.  She  could 
not  remember  a  single  German  word  except  Hebe 
Schwiegermutter. 

Frau  Dremmel,  urged  and  encouraged,  was  finally 
got  out  of  the  house  and  into  the  garden  and  along 
between  the  gooseberry  bushes  to  where  the  tea-table 
stood  and  an  armchair  for  her  with  a  cushion  on  it. 
She  went  with  plain  reluctance.  She  did  not  cease  to 
stare  at  her  daughter-in-law.  Especially  her  gaze 
lingered  on  her  feet.  Becoming  aware  of  this,  Ingeborg 
tried  to  hide  them,  but  you  cannot  hide  feet  that  are 
being  walked  on,  and  when  she  sat  down  to  pour  out 
the  coffee  she  found  her  short  skirt  was  incapable  of 
hiding  anything  lower  than  above  her  ankles. 

She  grew  nervous.  She  spilt  the  milk  and  dropped 
a  spoon.  Beside  the  rigid  figure  in  the  armchair  she 
seemed  and  felt  terribly  fluid  and  uncontrolled.  The 
cheek  that  was  turned  to  her  mother-in-law  flushed 
hotly.  She  acutely  knew  her  mother-in-law  was  ob- 
serving this,  and  that  made  it  hotter.  If  only,  thought 
Ingeborg,  she  would  look  at  something  else  or  say  some- 
thing. Over  the  rim  of  her  cup,  however,  Frau 
Dremmel's  eyes  moved  up  and  down  and  round  and 
through  the  strange  creature  her  son  had  married. 
The  rest  of  her  was  almost  wholly  motionless.  Inge- 
borg had  nervously  swallowed  three  cups  of  the  black 
stuff  before  Frau  Dremmel  was  half  through  one.  At 
last  a  German  word  flashed  into  her  mind  and  she 
flung  herself  on  it.  " Schon — wunderschdn!''''  she  cried, 
waving  her  hands  comprehensively  over  all  the  scenery. 

For  an  instant  Frau  Dremmel  removed  her  eyes 
from  her  daughter-in-law's  warm  and  quivering  body 
to  follow  her  gesture,  but  seeing  nothing  soon  got  them 
back  again.     She  made  no  comment  on  the  scenery. 


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THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  159 

Her  face  remained  wholly  impassive;  and  Ingeborg 
realized  that  the  rye-field  would  be  no  use  as  a  means 
of  entertainment. 

She  could  not  again  say  sckon,  and  the  meal  went 
on  in  silence.  Frau  Dremmel's  method  of  eating  it  was 
to  begin  a  piece  of  each  of  the  cakes  and  immediately 
leave  it  off.  This  afflicted  Ingeborg,  who  had  supposed 
them  to  be  very  lovely  cakes.  Frau  Dremmel's  place 
at  the  table — she  had  pulled  her  chair  close  up  to  it — 
was  asterisked  with  begun  and  abandoned  cakes.  On 
the  other  hand  she  ate  many  of  the  sandwiches,  and 
they  drew  forth  the  only  word  she  said  to  Ingeborg 
during  the  whole  of  tea.  "Fl&isck,"  said  Frau  Dremmel, 
removing  her  eyes  for  one  moment  from  Ingeborg  to 
the  sandwiches  that  were  being  offered  her,  and  with  a 
dingy,  investigating  forefinger  lifting  up  that  portion  of 
each  sandwich  which  may  be  described  as  its  lid. 

"Ja,  ja"  said  Ingeborg  responsively,  delighted  at 
this  flicker  of  life. 

It  was,  however,  the  only  one.  After  it  silence,  com- 
plete and  impenetrable,  settled  down  on  Frau  Dremmel. 
She  did  not  even  speak  to  her  son  when  half  an  hour 
later  he  came  out  in  search  of  the  coffee  he  had  failed 
to  find  on  his  doormat.  Her  manners  prevented  her, 
in  his  house  on  this  first  visit  after  his  marriage,  from 
uttering  the  unmanageable  truths  that  come  so  natur- 
ally from  the  mouths  of  neglected  mothers;  and  except 
for  those  she  had  nothing  to  say  to  him.  Herr  Dremmel 
expected  nothing.  His  deeply  engaged  thoughts  left 
no  room  in  him  for  anything  but  a  primitive  simplicity. 
He  was  hungry,  and  he  ate;  thirsty,  and  he  drank. 
The  silent  figure  at  the  table,  of  whose  presence  every 
nerve  in  Ingeborg's  body  was  conscious,  produced  no 
impression  on  him  whatever. 


160  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"Robert — do  tell  your  mother  how  I  really  do  want 
to  talk  to  her  if  only  I  could,"  said  Ingeborg,  pressing 
her  hands  together  in  her  lap  and  tying  and  untying 
her  handkerchief  into  knots.  There  were  little  beads 
on  her  upper  lip.  The  rings  of  hair  on  her  temples 
were  quite  damp. 

He  glanced  at  his  mother,  drawn  up  and  taut  in 
her  chair,  and  immediately  she  turned  her  eyes  on  to 
him  and  stared  back  at  him  steadily. 

" Little  One,"  he  said,  "I  have  told  you  she  is  a  simple 
woman,  not  used  to  or  capable  of  wielding  the  weapons 
of  social  arts.     Be  simple,  too,  and  all  will  be  well." 

"But  I  am  being  simple,"  protested  Ingeborg.  'I'm 
dumb;  I'm  blank;  what  can  I  be  simpler  than  that?" 

"Then  all  is  well.     Give  me  coffee." 

He  ate  and  drank  in  silence,  and  got  up  to  go  away 
again. 

Frau  Dremmel  looked  at  him  and  said  something. 

"Is  it  the  carriage?"  asked  Ingeborg. 

"She  wants  to  go  indoors,"  said  Herr  Dremmel. 

"Indoors?" 

"She  says  she  does  not  like  mosquitoes." 

He  went  away  into  the  house.  There  was  nothing 
for  it  but  to  follow.  As  they  reached  the  back  door 
the  church  clock  struck  five,  but  Ingeborg,  glancing  at 
her  mother-in-law's  impassive  face,  saw  this  sound 
meant  nothing  to  her.  She  followed  her  into  the 
living-room  and  watched  her  helplessly  as  she  arranged 
herself  once  more  on  the  sofa. 

When  the  clock  struck  half-past  five  she  was  still 
on  it.  She  seemed  to  be  waiting.  For  what  was  she 
waiting?  Ingeborg  asked  herself,  whose  handkerchief 
was  now  rubbed  into  a  hard  ball  between  her  nervous 
hands.     Impossible  either  to  move  her  or  communicate 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  161 

with  her.  Rigidly  she  sat,  her  eyes  examining  the 
room  and  each  object  in  it  but  yet  not  for  an  instant 
missing  the  least  of  her  daughter-in-law's  movements. 
Ingeborg  seized  her  dictionary  and  grammar  and  made 
a  final  effort  to  build  a  bridge  out  of  them  across  which 
their  souls  might  even  now  go  out  to  meet  each  other, 
but  Frau  Dremmel  did  not  seem  to  understand  the 
nature  of  her  efforts,  and  only  stared  with  a  deepened 
blankness  when  Ingeborg  read  her  out  a  sentence  from 
the  grammar  that  dealt  with  weather  they  were  not 
that  day  having. 

What  was  she  waiting  for?  Seven  o'clock  struck, 
and  still  she  waited.  The  clock  in  the  room  ticked 
through  the  minutes,  and  every  half  hour  they  could 
hear  the  church  clock  striking.  Ingeborg  brought  her 
a  footstool;  brought  her  a  cushion;  brought  her,  in 
extremity,  a  glass  of  water;  began  to  sew  at  a  torn 
duster;  left  off  sewing  at  it;  fluttered  nervously  among 
the  pages  of  her  grammar;  pored  in  her  dictionary; 
and  alwavs  Frau  Dremmel  watched  her.  She  found 
herself  struggling  against  a  tendency  to  think  of  her 
mother-in-law  as  It.  At  seven  she  heard  Use  go  home 
singing — happy  Use,  able  to  go  away.  Soon  after- 
wards she  finally  faltered  into  immobility,  giving  up, 
sitting  now  quite  still  herself  in  her  chair,  the  flush  faded 
from  her  cheek,  pale  and  crumpled.  It  was  her  and 
Robert's  supper-time.  Soon  it  would  be  their  bed- 
time. Quite  soon  it  would  be  to-morrow.  And  then 
it  would  be  next  week.  And  then  there  would  be  winter 
coming  on.     .     .     .     Was  tin's  visit  never  to  end? 

At  eight  it  at  last  became  plain  to  her  that  what 
Frau  Dremmel  was  waiting  for  must  be  supper.  This 
was  terrible,  for  there  was  none.  At  least,  there  was 
only  that  repetition  of  tea  and  breakfast  that  made  her 


162  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

and  Robert's  lives  so  wholesome.  She  had  calculated 
the  visit  on  the  basis  of  tea  only,  and  had  prepared 
only  and  elaborately  for  that.  For  half  an  hour  she 
sat  on  and  hoped  she  was  mistaken.  She  did  not  know 
that  in  East  Prussia  if  you  are  invited  to  tea  you  also 
stay  to  supper.  But  at  half -past  eight  she  realised  that 
there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  go  and  fetch  it  in. 

When  the  ruins  of  the  same  meal  that  had  been 
offered  her  once  already  were  produced  a  second  time 
and  set  out  clumsily  on  the  unaccustomed  living-room 
table  among  the  pushed-aside  Merediths  and  Kiplings, 
the  bones  of  this  skeleton  being  slowly  put  together 
under  her  very  eyes,  and  Ingeborg  at  last  by  ceasing  to 
go  in  and  out  fetching  things  and  sinking  into  a  chair 
indicated  that  that  was  all,  Frau  Dremmel,  after  waiting 
a  little  longer,  opened  her  mouth  and  startled  her 
daughter-in-law  by  speech. 

" '  Braikartoffeir  said  Frau  Dremmel. 

Ingeborg  sat  up  quickly.  After  the  hours  of  silence 
it  was  uncanny. 

"  Bratkartoffel,"  said  Frau  Dremmel  again. 

"Did  you — did  you  speak?"  said  Ingeborg,  staring 
at  her. 

"Bratkartoffel,"  said  Frau  Dremmel  a  third  time. 

Ingeborg  jumped  up  and  ran  across  the  passage  to 
the  laboratory  door. 

"Robert — Robert,"  she  cried,  twisting  the  handle, 
"come — come  quickly — your  mother — she's  talking, 
she's  saying  things "  There  was  the  same  excite- 
ment and  wonder  in  her  voice  as  there  is  in  that  of  a 
parent  whose  baby  has  suddenly  and  for  the  first  time 
said 'Papa. 

Herr  Dremmel  came  out  at  once.  From  the  sound 
of  her  he  felt  something  must  have  happened. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  163 

She  seized  him  and  pulled  him  into  the  living-room. 
"Now — listen,"  she  said,  holding  him  there  facing 
the  sofa. 

Herr  Dremmel  looked  perplexed.  'What  is  it, 
Little  One?  "  he  asked. 

"Listen — she'll  say  it  again  soon,"  said  Ingeborg 
eagerly. 

"What  is  it,  mother?"  he  asked  in  German. 

Frau  Dremmel,  without  moving  her  head,  ran  her 
eyes  over  the  table. 

"Are  there  not  even — not  even "   she    began, 

but  stopped.     She  was  evidently  combating  an  emotion. 

"Thunder  of  heaven,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  looking 
from  one  woman  to  the  other,  "what  is  it?  " 

But  Frau  Dremmel  was  not  able,  after  the  hours  of 
waiting  for  a  supper  that  seemed  to  her  in  every  detail 
a  studied  insult  on  her  daughter-in-law's  part,  to  bear 
harshness  from  her  son.  Drawing  out  a  handkerchief 
that  had  no  end  and  that  reached  to  her  eyes  while 
yet  remaining  in  her  pocket,  she  began  to  cry. 

Ingeborg  was  appalled.  She  ran  to  her,  and,  kneel- 
ing down,  begged  her  in  English  to  tell  her  what  was 
the  matter.  She  called  her  Hebe  Schwiegermiitter  over 
and  over  again.  She  stroked  her  sleeve,  she  patted 
her,  she  even  laid  her  head  on  her  lap. 

But  Frau  Dremmel  for  the  first  time  did  not  notice 
her.  She  was  saying  detached  things  into  her  handker- 
chief, and  they  were  all  for  her  son. 

"A  widow,"  wept  Frau  Dremmel.  "A  widow  for 
ten  years.  When  I  think  of  your  dear  father.  How 
much  he  thought  of  me.  My  first  visit.  My  visit  on 
your  marriage.  Treated  as  though  I  were  anybody. 
Forced  to  drink  coffee  out  of  doors.  Like  a  homeless 
animal.     No  sofa.     No  real  table.     Flocks  of  mosqui- 


164  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

toes.  No  supper.  No  supper  at  all.  Nothing  pre- 
pared for  me.  For  the  mother.  For  your  sainted 
father's  wife.  His  cherished  wife  long  before  you  were 
thought  of.  If  it  had  not  been  for  me  you  would  not 
have  been  here  at  all.  Nor  she.  And  I  am  to  go  home 
unfed.  Uncared  for.  Not  even  the  least  one  has  a 
right  to  expect  given  one.  Not  even  what  the  poorest 
peasant  has  each  night.  Not  even" — again  she  said 
the  magic  word — "  Bratkartojfel ' 

"There,  there,"  said  Ingeborg  soothingly,  stroking 
her  anxiously— "  there,  there.  Robert,  what  is  Brat- 
kartojfel?" 

"But  never  mind.  Never  mind,"  said  Frau  Drem- 
mel,  wiping  her  eyes  only  to  weep  afresh — "soon  I 
shall  be  with  him.  With  him  again.  With  your  dear 
father.  And  this — this  is  nothing,  all  nothing.  It  is 
only  the  will  of  God." 

"There,  there,"  said  Ingeborg,  anxiously  stroking 
her. 


CHAPTER  XV 

IT  WAS  not  until  some  days  later  that  she  discovered 
the  reason  for  her  mother-in-law's  tears. 
She  could  get  no  information  from  Herr  Dremmel. 
His  thoughts  were  not  to  be  pinned  a  minute  to  such  a 
subject.  He  swept  her  questionings  away  with  the 
wave  of  the  arm  of  one  who  sweeps  his  surroundings 
clear  of  rubbish,  and  the  most  that  could  be  extracted 
from  him  was  a  general  observation  as  to  the  small 
amount  of  good  to  be  obtained  from  proximities.  But 
Ingeborg  one  afternoon,  walking  longer  than  usual, 
facing  the  hot  sun  and  the  flies  and  sand  of  the  road 
beyond  the  village  to  see  where  it  led  to  instead  of,  as 
she  generally  did,  exploring  footpaths  in  the  forest, 
came  after  much  heat  and  exertion  to  a  thicket  of  trees 
that  were  not  firs  or  pines  but  green  cool  things,  oaks, 
and  acacias  and  silver  birches,  and  going  through  them 
along  a  grass-grown  road  fanning  herself  with  her  hat 
as  she  walked  in  the  pleasant  shade,  found  herself 
stopped  by  a  white  gate,  a  notice  telling  her  she  was 
not  to  advance  further,  and  a  garden.  Beyond  the 
flower  beds  and  long  untidy  grass  of  this  garden  she 
saw  a  big  steep-roofed  house  built  high  on  a  terrace.  On 
the  terrace  a  dog  was  lying  panting,  with  its  tongue 
out.  Nothing  else  alive  was  in  sight,  and  there  were 
no  sounds  except  the  rustling  of  the  leaves  over  her 
head  and  such  faint  chirping  as  birds  make  in  July. 
"  Who  lives  in  that  big  white  house  away  over  there?  " 

1G.3 


166  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

she  asked  Herr  Dremmel  when  next  she  saw  him,  which 
was  not  till  that  evening  at  supper;  and  she  nodded 
her  head,  her  hands  being  full  of  the  coffee  pot,  in  the 
direction  of  the  north. 

Herr  Dremmel  was  ruffled.  He  had  been  plunged 
in  parish  affairs  since  breakfast,  for  it  was  the  day 
appointed  by  him  and  recurring  once  a  fortnight  into 
which  by  skilful  organizing  he  packed  them  all.  The 
world  in  consequence  on  every  second  Tuesday  appeared 
to  him  a  place  of  folly.  People  were  born  and  lived  em- 
bedded in  ancient  folly.  The  folly  of  their  parents, 
already  stale  when  they  got  it,  was  handed  down  to 
them  intact,  not  shot  at  all,  thought  Herr  Dremmel  on 
these  alternate  Tuesdays,  with  the  smallest  ray  of  per- 
ception of  different  and  better  things.  The  school 
children  were  still  learning  about  Bismarck's  birthday, 
the  schoolmaster  was  still  laboriously  computing  attend- 
ances and  endeavouring  to  obey  the  difficult  law  which 
commanded  him  to  cane  the  absent,  the  elders  of  the 
church  were  still  refusing  to  repair  the  steeple  in  time, 
the  confirmation  class  was  still  meeting  explanations 
and  exhortations  with  thick  inattention,  the  ecclesias- 
tical authorities  were  still  demanding  detailed  reports 
of  progress  when  there  was  not  and  could  not  be  prog- 
ress, couples  were  still  forgetting  marriage  until  the 
last  hurried  moment  and  then  demanding  it  with  in- 
sistent cries,  infants  were  still  being  hastily  christened 
before  the  same  neglects  that  killed  those  other  infants 
who  else  might  have  been  their  proud  and  happy  grand- 
parents carried  them  off,  and  peasants  were  still  slink- 
ing away  at  the  bare  mention  of  intelligence  and  manure. 

He  was  exceedingly  ruffled;  for  while  he  had  been 
wrestling  with  these  various  acquiescences  and  evasions 
his  real  work  was  lying  neglected  out  there  in  the  sun, 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  167 

in  there  in  the  laboratory,  and  a  whole  dav  of  twelve 
precious  hours  was  gone  for  ever;  and  when  Ingeborg 
said,  "Who  lives  in  that  big  white  house?"  Herr  Drem- 
mel,  with  his  wasted  day  behind  him,  and  the  continued 
brassiness  of  the  heavens  above  him,  and  the  persistence 
in  that  place  of  trees  of  mosquitoes,  stared  at  her  a 
moment  and  then  said,  bringing  his  hand  down  violently 
on  the  table,  "Hell  and  Devils." 

"Who?"  said  Ingeborg. 

"  We  must  call  on  them  at  once." 

"What?" 

"My  patron.  He  will  be  incensed  that  I  have  not 
presented  you  sooner.  I  forgot  him.  That  will  be 
another  day  lost.    These  claims,  these  social  claims " 

He  got  up  and  took  some  agitated  steps  about  the 
table. 

"No  sooner,"  he  said,  frowning  angrily  at  the  path, 
"has  one  settled  one  thing  than  there  appears  another. 
To-day,  all  day  the  poor.  To-morrow,  all  day  the 
rich " 

"Do  we  call  continuously  all  day?" 

"- both  equally  obstinate,  both  equally  encased 

from  head  to  foot  in  the  impenetrable  thick  armour  of 
intellectual  sloth.  How,"  he  inquired,  turning  to  her 
with  all  the  indignant  wrath  of  the  thwarted  worker, 
"is  a  man  to  work  if  he  lives  in  a  constant  social  whirl?  " 

Ingeborg  sat  regarding  him  with  astonishment.  "He 
can't,"  she  said.  "But — do  we  whirl,  Robert?  Would 
one  call  what  we  do  here  whirling?  " 

"What?  When  my  work  has  been  neglected  all 
day  to-day  on  behalf  of  the  poor  and  will  be  neglected 
all  day  to-morrow  on  behalf  of  the  rich?  " 

"But  why  will  it  take  us  all  dav?" 

"A  man   must  prepare.     He  cannot  call  as  he  is. 


168  THE  PASTORS  WIFE 

He  must,"  said  Herr  Dremmel  with  irritable  gloom, 
"wash."  And  he  added  with  still  greater  irritation 
and  gloom,  "There  has  to  be  a  clean  shirt." 

"But "  began  Ingeborg. 

He  waved  her  into  silence.  "I  do  not  like,"  he  said, 
with  a  magnificent  sweep  of  his  arm,  "clean  shirts." 

She  stared  at  him  with  the  parted  lips  of  interest. 

"I  am  not  at  home  in  them.  I  am  not  myself  in 
a  clean  shirt  for  at  least  the  first  two  hours." 

"Don't  let's  call,"  said  Ingeborg.  'We're  so  happy 
as  we  are." 

"Nay,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  immediately  brought 
to  reason  by  his  wife's  support  of  his  unreason,  "but 
we  must  call.  There  are  duties  no  decent  man  neglects. 
And  I  am  a  decent  man.  I  will  send  a  messenger  to 
inquire  if  our  visit  to-morrow  will  be  acceptable.  I 
will  put  on  my  shirt  early  in  order  to  get  used  to  it. 
And  I  will  endeavour,  by  a  persistent  amiability  so  long 
as  the  visit  lasts,  to  induce  my  patron  to  forgot  that 
I  forgot  him." 

Herr  Dremmel  had  for  some  time  past  been  prac- 
tising forgetting  his  patron.  He  had  found  this  course, 
after  divers  differences  of  opinion,  simplest  and  most 
convenient.  The  patron,  Baron  Glambeck  of  Glam- 
beck,  was  a  serious  real  Christian  who  believed  that 
the  poor  should,  like  some  vast  pudding  that  will  not 
otherwise  turn  out  well,  be  constantly  stirred  up, 
and  he  was  unable  to  approve  of  a  pastor  who  except 
in  church  and  on  every  alternate  Tuesday  forbore 
to  stir.  It  was  for  this  forbearance,  however,  that 
Herr  Dremmel  was  popular  in  the  parish.  Before  his 
time  there  had  been  a  constant  dribble  of  pastor  all 
over  it,  making  it  never  a  moment  safe  from  intrusion. 
Herr  Pastor  Dremmel  might  be  fiery  in  the  pulpit, 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  169 

but  he  was  quite  quiet  out  of  it;  he  was  like  a  good 
watchdog,  savage  in  its  kennel  and  indifferent  when 
loose.  Kokensee  had  as  one  man  refused  to  support 
the  patron  when  he  had  wished  some  time  before  to 
bring  about  Herr  Dremmel's  removal.  Its  pastor  did 
not  go  from  house  to  house  giving  advice.  Its  pastor 
was  invisible  and  absorbed.  These  were  great  things 
in  a  clergyman,  and  should  not  lightly  be  let  go.  Noth- 
ing could  be  done  in  the  face  of  the  parish's  opposition, 
and  Kokensee  kept  its  pastor;  but  Baron  Glambeck 
ceased  to  patronise  Divine  Service  in  Kokensee,  and 
until  Herr  Dremmel  brought  Ingeborg  to  make  his 
wedding  call  he  had  had  no  word  with  him  for  three 
years. 

The  Dremmels  had  announced  themselves  for  four 
o'clock,  and  when  they  drove  up  to  the  house  along  the 
shady  grass  road  and  through  the  white  gate  they  were 
met  on  the  steps  of  the  terrace  by  a  servant  who,  if  he 
had  been  in  Redchester,  would  have  been  Wilson.  On 
the  top  of  the  steps  stood  Baron  Glambeck,  tightly 
buttoned-up  in  black,  formal,  grave.  Further  back, 
beneath  the  glass  roof  of  the  terrace,  stood  his  wife, 
tightly  buttoned-up  in  black,  formal,  grave.  They 
were  both,  if  Ingeborg  had  known  it,  extremely  correct 
according  to  the  standards  of  their  part  of  the  country. 
They  were  unadorned,  smoothed  out,  black,  she  abun- 
dant in  her  smoothness,  he  spare  in  his;  and  they 
greeted  Ingeborg  with  exactly  the  cordiality  suitable  to 
the  reception  of  one's  pastor's  new  wife,  who  ought  to 
have  been  brought  to  call  long  ago  but  was  not  in  any 
way  responsible  for  those  bygones  which  studded  their 
memory  so  disagreeably  in  connection  with  her  husband, 
a  cordiality  with  the  chill  on.  Dignity  and  coats  of 
arms  pervaded  the  place.     Monograms  with  coronets 


170  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

were  embroidered  and  painted  on  everything  one  sat 
on  or  touched.  The  antlers  of  deer  shot  by  the  Baron, 
with  the  dates  and  places  of  their  shooting  affixed  to 
each,  bristled  thickly  on  the  walls.  They  saw  no  ser- 
vant who  was  not  a  man. 

"Please  take  your  hat  off,"  said  the  Baroness  in 
English,  carefully  keeping  her  voice  slightly  on  the 
side  of  coldness. 

Ingeborg  was  very  nearly  frightened. 

She  would  have  been  quite  frightened  if  she  had 
been  less  well  trained  by  the  Bishop  in  unimportance. 
She  had,  however,  owing  to  this  training,  left  off  being 
shy  years  before.  She  had  so  small  an  opinion  of  her- 
self that  there  was  no  room  in  her  at  all  for  selfcon- 
sciousness;  and  she  arrived  at  the  Glambecks'  in  her 
usual  condition  of  excessive  naturalness,  ready  to  talk, 
ready  to  be  pleased  and  interested. 

But  it  was  conveyed  to  her  instantly  on  seeing  the 
Baroness — there  was  an  astonishment  in  the  way  she 
looked  at  her — that  her  clothes  were  not  right.  And 
just  the  request  or  suggestion  or  demand — she  did  not 
know  which  of  these  it  really  was — that  she  should 
take  off  her  hat,  made  her  realise  she  was  on  new 
ground,"  in  places  where  the  webs  of  strange  customs 
were  thick  about  her  feet. 

She  was,  for  a  moment,  very  nearly  frightened. 

'You  will  be  more  comfortable,"  said  the  Baroness, 
"without  your  hat." 

She  took  it  off  obediently,  glancing  beneath  her 
eyelashes,  as  she  drew  out  the  pins,  at  the  Baroness's 
smooth  black  head  and  unwrinkled  black  body,  per- 
ceiving with  the  clearness  of  a  revelation  that  that  was 
how  she  ought  to  look  herself.  Skimpier,  of  course, 
for  the  years  had  not  yet  had  their  will  with  her,  but 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  171 

she  ought  to  be  a  version  of  the  effect  done  in  lean.  She 
resolved,  in  her  thirst  after  fulfilled  duty,  to  get  a  black 
dress  and  practise. 

She  thought  it  wisest  not  to  think  what  her  hair 
must  be  looking  like  when  her  hat  was  off,  for  she  had 
not  expected  to  be  hatless,  and  well  did  she  know  it 
b*y  nature  for  a  straggler,  a  thing  inclined  to  wander 
from  the  grasp  of  hairpins  and  go  off  on  its  own  account 
into  wantonings  and  rings  which  were  all  the  more 
conspicuous  because  of  their  lurid  approach  in  colour- 
ing to  .the  beards  of  her  ancestors — sun-kissed  Scan- 
dinavians who  walked  the  earth  in  their  strength  hung, 
according  to  the  way  the  light  took  them,  with  beards 
that  were  either  the  colour  of  flames,  or  of  apricots, 
or  of  honey.  Well,  if  they  would  make  her  take  her 
hat  off     .     .     . 

By  the  time  she  was  on  the  sofa  she  was  presently 
put  on  in  the  inner  hall  she  had  caught  up  with  her 
usual  condition  of  naturalness  again,  and  sat  on  it 
interested  and  forgetful  of  self.  The  Baroness's  eyes 
wandered  over  her,  and  they  wandered  over  her  with 
much  the  same  quality  in  their  look  that  had  been  in 
her  mother-in-law's.  And  always  when  they  got  to 
her  feet  they  lingered.  Her  skirt  again  reached  only 
to  her  ankles.  All  her  outdoor  skirts  did  that.  "But 
I  can't  help  having  feet,"  thought  Ingeborg,  noticing 
this.  They  were  small  by  nature,  and  the  artful  shoes 
of  the  London  shoemaker  who  had  shared  in  providing 
her  and  Judith's  trousseau  made  them  seem  still  smaller. 
She  did  not  try  to  hide  them  as  she  had  tried  when 
Frau  Dremmel  stared.  It  was  Frau  Dremmel's  heavy 
silence  that  had  unnerved  her.  These  people  talked; 
and  the  Baroness's  English  was  reassuringly  good. 

Nobody,  the  Baroness  was  thinking,  and  also  simul- 


172  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

taneously  the  Baron,  who  was  fit  to  be  a  pastor's  wife 
had  feet  like  that — little,  incapable  feet.  Nobody, 
indeed,  who  was  a  really  nice  woman  had  them.  One 
left  off  having  them  when  one  was  a  child  and  never 
had  them  again.  The  errands  of  domesticity  on  which 
one  ran,  the  perpetual  up  and  down  of  stairs,  the  hours 
standing  on  the  cold  stone  floor  of  servants'  quarters 
seeing  that  one  was  not  cheated,  the  innumerable 
honourable  activities  that  beautified  and  dignified 
womanhood,  necessitated  large  loose  shoes.  A  true 
wife's  feet  should  have  room  to  spread  and  flatten. 
Feet  were  one  of  those  numerous  portions  of  the  body 
that  had  been  devised  by  an  all-wise  Creator  for  use 
and  not  show. 

As  for  the  rest  of  the  Frau  Pastor's  appearance  there 
were,  it  is  true,  some  young  ladies  in  the  country  who 
dressed  rather  like  that  in  the  summer,  but  they  were 
ladies  in  the  Glambeck  set,  ladies  of  family  or  married 
into  family.  That  the  person  who  had  married  one's 
pastor,  a  man  whose  father  had  been  of  such  obscure 
beginnings,  and  indeed  continuations,  that  even  his 
having  been  dead  ten  years  hardly  made  him  respect- 
able, should  dress  in  this  manner  was  a  catastrophe. 
Already  they  had  suffered  too  much  from  the  conduct 
of  their  loose-talking,  unchristian  pastor;  and  now, 
instead  of  bringing  a  neat  woman  in  black  to  be  pre- 
sented to  them,  a  neat  woman  with  a  gold  chain,  per- 
haps, round  her  high  black  collar,  it  being  a  state 
occasion  and  she,  after  all,  newly  married — but  only 
a  very  light  chain,  and  inherited  not  bought — and  a 
dress  so  sufficient  that  it  reached  beyond  and  enveloped 
anything  she  might  possess  in  the  way  of  wrist  or 
ankle  or  throat,  here  was  the  most  unsuitable  wife  he 
could    have    chosen — short,    of   course,    of   marrying 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  173 

among  Jews.  While  as  for  her  hair,  when  it  came  to 
her  hair  their  thoughts  ceased  to  formulate.  That 
small  and  flattened  and  disordered  head,  like  a  boy's 
head  run  wild,  like  something  on  fire,  which  emerged 
when  she  took  off  her  hat    .    .    . 

Coffee  was  served  on  the  big  table  in  front  of  the 
sofa.  The  Baroness  sat  beside  Ingeborg,  and  the  Baron 
and  Herr  Dremmel  drew  up  chairs  opposite.  The 
coffee  was  good,  and  there  was  one  excellent  cake.  No 
gooseberries,  no  flowers,  no  unwieldy  sandwiches;  just 
plainness  and  excellence. 

The  two  men  talked  to  each  other,  not  to  the  women, 
the  Baron  stiffly  and  on  his  guard,  Herr  Dremmel 
taking  immense  pains  to  be  amiable  and  not  offend. 
Between  them  hung  the  memories  of  altercations. 
Between  them  also  hung  the  knowledge  of  the  three 
years  during  which  the  Baron  and  his  wife,  as  a  result 
of  the  last  and  hottest  difference  of  opinion,  had  at- 
tended Divine  Service  in  a  church  that  did  not  belong 
to  them.  They  had  altogether  cut  Kbkensee.  For 
three  years  their  private  gallery  in  the  church  in 
which  their  ancestors  had  once  a  fortnight  feared  God 
had  been  a  place  where  mice  enjoyed  themselves.  Its 
chairs  were  covered  with  dust;  its  hymn-books,  grow- 
ing brown,  still  lay  open  at  the  place  the  Glambecks 
had  praised  God  out  of  last.  Such  a  withdrawal  of 
approval  would  have  made  any  other  pastor's  life  a 
thing  of  chill  and  bleakness;  Herr  Dremmel  hardly 
observed  it.  He  had  no  vanities.  He  was  pleased  that 
the  rival  pastor  should  be  gratified.  He  cared  nothing 
for  comment,  and  had  no  eye  for  shrugs  and  smiles. 
His  eyes,  his  thoughts,  were  wanted  for  his  work;  and 
he  found  it  a  relief,  a  release  from  at  least  one  interrup- 
tion, when  his  patron  took  to  leaving  him  frigidly  alone. 


174  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

Indeed,  when  he  drove  up  to  the  Glambecks'  house 
and  remembered  he  had  not  had  to  go  there  for  three 
peaceful  years  he  felt  really  grateful,  and  he  showed 
his  gratitude  by  performing  immense  feats  of  social 
pleasantness  during  the  visit.  He  agreed  gigantically 
with  everything  the  Baron  said.  Whatever  subject 
was  touched  upon — very  cautiously,  for  the  Baron 
mistrusted  all  subjects  with  Herr  Dremmel — he  in- 
stantly dragged  it  off  the  dangerous  shoals  of  the  im- 
mediate and  close  up  to  a  cosmic  height  and  distance, 
a  height  and  distance  so  enormous  that  even  what 
the  Kaiser  said  last  became  a  negligible  tinkling  and 
Conscience  and  Dogma  quavered  off  into  silence;  and 
he  explained  to  the  Baron,  who  guardedly  said 
"Perhaps,"  that  though  people's  opinions  might  and 
did  vary  seen  near,  if  one  spread  them  out  wide  enough, 
pushed  them  back  far  enough,  took  them  up  high 
enough,  bored  them  down  deep  enough,  got  them  away 
from  detail  and  loose  from  foregrounds,  one  would 
come  at  last  to  the  great  Mother  Opinion  of  them  all, 
in  whose  huge  lap  men  curled  themselves  up  contentedly 
like  the  happy  identities  they  indeed  were  and  went, 
after  kissing  each  other,  in  placidest  agreement  to  sleep. 

"Perhaps,"  said  the  Baron. 

Personalities,  immediate  interests,  duties,  daily  life, 
were  swamped  in  the  vast  seas  in  which,  with  politeness 
but  determination,  Herr  Dremmel  took  the  Baron 
swimming.  One  only  needed,  he  repeated,  warm  with  the 
wish  to  keep  in  roomy  regions,  to  trace  back  any  two  opin- 
ions, however  bitterly  different  they  now  were,  far  enough 
to  get  at  last  to  the  point  where  they  sweetly  kissed. 

"Perhaps,"  said  the  Baron. 

"One  only   needed "   went  on   Herr  Dremmel, 

making  all-embracing  movements  with  his  arms. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  175 

But  the  Baron  cleared  his  throat  and  began  to  enu- 
merate contrary  facts. 

Herr  Dremmel  agreed  at  once  that  he  was  right 
just  there,  and  pushed  the  point  of  kissing  back  a  little 
further. 

The  Baron  went  after  him  with  more  facts. 

Herr  Dremmel  again  agreed,  and  went  back  further. 
In  this  way  they  came  at  last  to  the  Garden  of  Eden, 
beyond  which  the  Baron  refused  to  budge,  alleging  that 
further  back  than  that  no  Christian  could  go;  and  even 
in  that  he  repudiated  the  kiss.  He  was  convinced, 
though  he  concealed  it,  that  at  no  period  of  human 
thought  could  his  and  Herr  DremmeFs  opinions,  for 
example,  have  kissed. 

But  it  was  an  amiable  view,  and  Herr  Dremmel 
was  extremely  polite  and  was  bent  evidently  on  peace, 
and  the  Baron,  recognising  this,  became  less  distrustful. 
He  even  contributed  a  thought  of  his  own  at  last,  after 
having  been  negatively  occupied  in  dissecting  Herr 
Dremmel's,  and  said  that  in  his  opinion  it  was  details 
that  made  life  difficult. 

The  Baroness,  who  loved  him  and  overheard  him, 
was  anxious  he  should  have  more  coffee  with  plenty  of 
milk  in  it  after  this. 

"Men/'  she  explained  to  Ingeborg  in  careful  English 
as  she  poured  it  out,  "need  much  nourishment  because 
of  all  this  head-work." 

"I  suppose  they  do,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"When  I  was  first  married  I  remember  it  was  my 
chief  pride  and  joy  that  at  last  I  had  some  one  of  my 
very  own  to  nourish." 

"Oh?"  said  Ingeborg. 

"It  is  an  instinct,"  said  the  Baroness,  who  had  the 
air  of  administering  a  lesson,  "in  a  true  woman.     She 


176  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

wishes  to  nourish.     And  naturally  the  joy  of  nourishing 
two  is  double  the  joy  of  nourishing  one." 

"I  suppose  it  is,"  said  Ingeborg,  who  did  not  quite 
follow. 

"When  my  first-born " 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  Ingeborg,  glad  to  understand. 
'When  my  first-born  was  laid  in  my  arms  I  cannot 
express,  Frau  Pastor,  what  happiness  I  had  in  being 
given  yet  another  human  being  to  nourish." 

"I  suppose  it  was  delightful,"  said  Ingeborg,  politely 
sympathetic. 

The  Baroness's  eyes  drooped  a  moment  inquiringly 
from  Ingeborg's  face  to  her  body. 

"For  six  years,"  she  went  on,  after  a  pause,  "I  had 
fresh  reason  for  happiness  regularly  at  Christmas." 

"I  suppose  you  have  the  loveliest  Christmases 
here,"  said  Ingeborg.  "Like  the  ones  in  books.  With 
trees." 

"Trees?  Naturally  we  have  trees.  But  I  had 
babies  as  well.  Every  Christinas  for  six  years  regularly 
my  Christmas  present  to  my  dear  husband  was  able  to 
be  a  baby." 

"What?"  said  Ingeborg,  opening  her  eyes.  "A 
fresh  one?" 

"Naturally  it  was  fresh.  One  does  not  have  the 
same  baby  twice." 

"No,  of  course  not.  But — how  did  you  hide  it  till 
Christmas  day?" 

"It  could  not,  naturally,"  said  the  Baroness  stiffly, 
"be  as  much  a  surprise  as  a  present  that  was  not  a 
baby  would  have  been,  but  it  was  for  all  practical 
purposes  hidden  till  Christinas.  On  that  day  it  was 
born." 

"Oh,   but  I  think  that  was  very  wonderful,"  said 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  177 

Ingeborg,  genuinely  pleased  by  such  neatness.  She 
leaned  forward  in  her  enthusiasm  and  clasped  her  hands 
about  her  knees. 

"Yes,"  said  the  Baroness,  relaxing  a  little  before 
this  flattering  appreciation.  "Yes.  It  was.  Some 
people  would  call  it  chance.  But  we,  as  Christians, 
knew  it  was  heaven." 

"But  how  'punctual"  said  Ingeborg  admiringly, 
"how  tidy!" 

'Yes,  yes,"  mused  the  Baroness,  relaxing  still  more 
in  the  warm  moisture  of  remembrance,  "they  were 
happy  times.  Happy,  happy  times.  One's  little  ones 
coming  and  going " 

"Oh?  Did  they  go  as  well  as  come? "  asked  Ingeborg, 
lowering  her  voice  to  condolence. 

"About  one's  knees,  I  mean,  and  the  house." 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  Ingeborg,  relieved. 

"Every  year  the  Christinas  candles  shining  down 
on  an  addition  to  our  treasures.  Every  year  the  gifts 
of  past  Christmases  gathered  about  the  tree  again, 
bigger  and  stronger  instead  of  being  lost  or  broken  as 
they  would  have  been  if  they  had  been  any  other  kind 
of  gift." 

'But  what  happened  when  there  weren't  any  more 
to  give?" 

"Then  I  gave  my  husband  cigar-cases." 

"Oh." 

"After  all,  most  women  have  to  do  that  all  their 
lives.  I  did  not  grumble.  When  heaven  ceased  to 
provide  me  with  a  present  for  him,  I  knew  how  to  bow 
my  head  and  went  and  bought  one.  There  are  ex- 
cellent cigar-cases  at  Wertheim's  in  Konigsberg  if  you 
wish  to  give  one  to  Herr  Pastor  next  Christinas.  They 
do  not  come  unsewn  at  tin1  corners  by  July  or  August 


178  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

in  the  way  those  one  buys  in  other  shops  do.  Ah,  yes. 
Happy  years.  Happy,  happy  years.  First  the  six 
years  of  great  joy  collecting  my  family,  and  then  the 
years  of  happiness  bringing  it  up.  Of  course  you  are 
fond  of  children?" 

"I've  never  had  any." 

"Naturally  you  have  not,"  said  the  Baroness,  stif- 
fening again. 

"So  I  don't  know,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"But  every  true  woman  loves  little  children,"  said 
the  Baroness. 

"But  they  must  be  there,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"  One  has  God-implanted  instincts,"  said  the  Baroness. 

"But  one  must  see  something  to  practise  them  on," 
said  Ingeborg. 

"A  true  woman  is  all  love,"  said  the  Baroness,  in  a 
voice  that  sounded  very  like  scolding. 

"I  suppose  she  is,"  said  Ingeborg,  who  felt  that  she 
never  could  have  met  one.  She  had  a  vision  of  some- 
thing altogether  soft  and  squelchy  and  humid  and  at 
the  same  time  wonderful.  "Are  any  of  your  children 
at  home?"  she  asked,  thinking  she  would  like  to  test 
her  instincts  on  the  younger  Glambecks. 

'They  are  grown  up  and  gone.  Out  into  the  world. 
Some   far   away    in   other   countries.     Ah,    yes.     One 

is  lonely "     The  Baroness  became  loftily  plaintive. 

"It  is  the  lot  of  parents.  Lonely,  lonely.  I  had  five 
daughters.  It  was  a  great  relief  to  get  them  all  mar- 
ried. There  was  naturally  the  danger  where  there  were 
so  many  of  some  of  them  staying  with  us  always." 

"But  then  you  wouldn't  have  been  lonely,"  said 
Ingeborg. 

"But  then,  Frau  Pastor,  they  would  not  have  been 
married." 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  179 

"No.  And  then,"  said  Ingeborg,  interested,  "you 
wouldn't  have  been  able  to  feel  lonely." 

The  Baroness  gazed  at  her. 

"These  things  are  nice,  you  know,"  said  Ingeborg, 
leaning  forward  again  in  her  interest.  "One  does  like 
it  somehow — being  sad,  you  know,  and  thinking  how 
lonely  one  is.  Of  course  it's  much  more  delicious  to 
be  happy,  but  not  being  happy  has  its  jollinesses. 
There's  a  perfume.  .  .  ."  She  sought  about  in  her 
mind — "It's  like  a  wet  day.  It  looks  gloomy  and 
miserable  compared  to  what  yesterday  was  like,  but 
there  is  an  enjoyment.  And  things" —  she  hesitated, 
groping — "things  seem  to  grow.  Different  ones.  Yet 
they're  beautiful,  too. 

But  the  Baroness,  who  did  not  follow  and  did  not 
want  to,  for  it  was  not  her  business  to  listen  to  her 
pastor's  wife,  drooped  an  inquiring  eye  again  over  Inge- 
borg's  body  and  cut  her  tendency  to  talk  more  than 
was  becoming  in  her  position  short  by  remarking  that 
she  was  still  very  thin. 

When  they  had  sat  there  till  the  coffee  was  cold 
Ingeborg,  in  a  pause  of  the  talk,  got  up  to  go. 

The  three  others  stared  at  her  without  moving. 
Even  her  own  Robert  stared  uncomprehending.  It 
seemed  a  lame  thing  to  have  to  explain  that  she  was 
now  going  home,  but  that  was  what  she  did  at  last 
murmur  down  to  the  motionless  and  surprised  Baron- 
ess. 

"Are  you  not  feeling  well?"  inquired  the  Baroness. 

"What  is  it,  Ingeborg?"  asked  Herr  Dremmel. 

The  Baron  went  over  to  a  window  and  opened  it. 
"A  little  faint,  no  doubt,"  he  said,  adding  something 
about  young  wives. 

The  Baroness  asked  her  if  she  would  like  to  lie  down. 


180  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

Herr  Drernmel  became  alert  and  interested.  "What 
is  it,  Little  One?"  he  asked  again,  getting  up. 

"I  think  it  would  be  good  if  the  Frau  Pastor  rested  a 
little  before  supper,"  said  the  Baroness,  getting  up,  too. 

"Certainly,"  said  Herr  Drernmel,  quite  eagerly,  and 
with  a  funny  expression  on  his  face. 

Ingeborg  gazed  from  one  to  the  other. 

"But,  Robert,"  she  said,  wondering  why  he  looked 
like  that,  "oughtn't  we  to  go  home?" 

"Dear  Frau  Pastor,"  said  the  Baroness  quite  warmly, 
"you  will  feel  better  presently.  Believe  me.  There  is 
an  hour  still  before  supper.  Come  with  me,  and  you 
shall  lie  down  and  rest." 

"But  Robert "  said  Ingeborg,  astonished. 

She  was,  however,  taken  away — it  seemed  a  sort  of 
sweeping  of  her  away — through  glass  doors,  down  a 
carpetless  varnished  passage  into  a  spare  bedroom,  and 
commanded  to  put  herself  on  the  high  white  bed  with 
her  head  a  little  lower  than  her  feet. 

"But,"  she  said,  "why?" 

'You  will  be  better  by  supper-time.  Oh,  I  know 
all  these  things,"  said  the  Baroness,  who  was  opening 
windows  and  had  grown  suddenly  friendly.  "Do  you 
feel  sick?" 

"Sick?" 

She  wondered  whether  the  amount  of  cake  she  had 
eaten  had  appeared  excessive.  She  had  had  two  pieces. 
Perhaps  there  was  a  rigid  local  custom  prescribing  only 
one.  She  felt  again  that  she  was  in  a  net  of  customs, 
with  nobody  to  explain.  The  Baroness  seemed  quite 
disappointed  when  she  assured  her  she  did  not  feel  sick 
at  all.  Ought  guests  to  feel  sick?  Was  it  a  subtle 
way  of  drawing  attention  to  the  irresistibleness  of  the 
host's  food?     It  then  occurred  to  her  that  it  might 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  181 

very  possibly  be  the  custom  in  these  country  places  to 
put  callers  to  bed  for  an  hour  in  the  middle  of  their 
call,  and  that  her  omission  to  put  her  mother-in-law- 
there  was  one  of  the  causes  of  her  tears.  Next  to  going 
home  as  quickly  as  one  did  in  England  she  felt  going  to 
bed  was  altogether  the  best  thing. 

This  thought,  that  it  must  be  the  custom,  made  her 
instantly  pliable.  With  every  gesture  of  politeness  she 
hastened  to  clamber  up  on  to  the  billows  of  feathers 
and  white  quilt.  There  was  a  smell  of  naphthalin  as 
she  sank  downwards,  a  smell  of  careful  warfare  carried 
on  incessantly  with  moth. 

The  Baroness  came  away  from  letting  in  floods  of 
air,  and  looked  at  her.  "I  am  sure,"  she  said,  "you  do 
feel  sick." 

"I  think  I  do — a  little,"  said  Ingeborg,  anxious  to 
give  every  satisfaction. 

It  was  evidently  the  right  thing  to  say,  for  her  hos- 
tess's face  lit  up.  She  went  out  of  the  room  quickly  and 
came  back  with  some  Eau  de  Cologne  and  a  fan. 

Ingeborg  watched  her  with  bright  alert  eyes  over  the 
edge  of  a  billow  of  feathers  while  she  fetched  a  little 
table  and  brought  it  to  the  bed  and  arranged  these 
things  on  it. 

How  odd  it  was,  she  thought,  greatly  interested. 
Was  the  Baron  simultaneously  putting  Robert  to  bed 
in  some  other  room?  She  felt  she  had  grown  suddenly 
popular,  that  she  was  doing  all  the  right  things  at  last. 
Contrasted  with  its  loftiness  during  the  first  part  of  the 
call  the  Baroness's  manner  was  quite  human  and  warm. 
She  put  the  table  close  to  her  side,  and  told  her  the  best 
thing  she  could  do,  quite  the  best  thing,  would  be  to 
try  and  sleep  a  little;  if  she  wanted  anything  she  was 
to  ring,  and  the  maid  Tina  would  appear. 


182  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"Ah,  yes,"  she  said  in  conclusion,  standing  for  a 
moment  looking  down  at  her  and  heaving  a  great  sigh 
that  seemed  to  Ingeborg  somehow  to  be  pleasurable, 
"ah,  yes.  When  one  has  said  A,  dear  Frau  Pastor,  one 
must  say  B.     Ah,  yes." 

And  she  went  out  again  on  tip-toe,  softly  closing 
the  door  and  leaving  Ingeborg  in  a  state  of  extreme 
and  active  interest  and  interrogation.  "When  one  has 
said  A  one  must  say  B.  .  .  ."  Why  must  one? 
And  what  was  B?  What,  indeed,  if  you  came  to  that, 
was  A? 

She  listened  a  moment,  raised  on  her  elbow,  her 
bright  head  more  ruffled  than  ever  after  its  descent  into 
the  billows,  then  she  slid  down  on  to  the  slippery  floor 
and  ran  across  in  her  stockings  to  one  of  the  big  open 
windows. 

It  looked  on  to  a  tangle  of  garden,  a  sort  of  wilder- 
ness of  lilac  bushes  and  syringa  and  neglected  roses  and 
rough  grass  and  hemlock  at  the  back  of  the  house. 
There  was  nobody  anywhere  to  be  seen,  and  she  got  up 
on  to  the  sill  and  sat  there  in  great  enjoyment,  swinging 
her  feet,  for  it  all  smelt  very  sweet  at  the  end  of  the 
long  hot  day,  till  she  thought  the  hour,  the  blessed 
hour,  must  be  nearly  over.  Then  she  stole  back  and 
rearranged  herself  carefully  on  the  bed. 

"But  this  is  the  way  of  paying  calls,"  she  thought, 
pulling  the  quilt  up  tidily  under  her  chin  and  waiting 
for  what  would  be  done  to  her  next. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THEY  did  not  get  away  till  nine  o'clock. 
There  was  supper  at  seven,  an  elaborate  meal, 
and  they  sat  over  it  an  hour  and  a  half.  Then 
came  more  coffee,  served  on  the  terrace  by  servants  in 
white  cotton  gloves,  and  half  an  hour  later,  just  before 
thev  left,  tea  and  sandwiches  and  cakes  and  fruit  and 
beer. 

Ingeborg  was  now  quite  clear  about  the  reason  for 
her  mother-in-law's  tears.  She  saw  very  vividly  how 
dreadful  her  behaviour  must  have  seemed.  That 
groaning  supper-table,  that  piling  up  as  the  end  of  the 
visit  drew  near  of  more  food  and  more  and  more,  and 
the  refreshment  of  bed  in  the  middle.     .     .     . 

"I  shall  invite  her  all  over  again,"  she  said  suddenly, 
determined  to  make  amends. 

When  she  said  this  the  carriage  had  finally  detached 
them  from  sight  and  sound  of  the  now  quite  cordial 
Glambecks,  and  was  heaving  through  the  sand  of  the 
dark  wooded  road  beyond  their  gate. 

"Whom  will  the  LittleOne  invite?"  asked  Herr  Drem- 
mel,  bending  down.  He  had  got  his  arm  round  her,  and 
at  the  bigger  joltings  tightened  his  hold  and  lifted  her  a 
little.  His  voice  was  tender,  and  when  he  bent  down 
there  was  an  enveloping  smell  of  cigars  and  wine,  mixed 
with  the  india-rubber  of  his  mackintosh. 

Ingeborg  knew  that  for  some  reason  she  could  not 
discover  she  had  made  herself  popular.    There  was  the 

183 


184  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

distinct  consciousness  of  having  suddenly,  half  way 
through  the  visit,  become  a  success.  And  she  was  still 
going  on  being  a  success,  she  felt.  But  why?  Robert 
was  extraordinarily  attentive.  Too  attentive,  really, 
for  oh,  what  a  wonderful  night  of  stars  and  warm  scents 
it  was,  once  they  were  in  the  open— what  a  night,  what 
a  marvel  of  a  night!  And  when  he  bent  over  her  it 
was  blotted  out.  Dear  Robert.  She  did  love  him. 
But  away  there  on  that  low  meadow,  far  away  over 
there  where  a  white  mist  lay  on  the  swampy  places 
and  the  leaves  of  the  flags  that  grew  along  the  ditch 
stood  up  like  silver  spears  in  the  moonlight,  one  could 
imagine  the  damp  cool  fragrance  rising  up  as  one's  feet 
stirred  the  grass,  the  perfect  solitariness  and  the  perfect 
silence.  Except  for  the  bittern.  There  was  a  bittern, 
she  had  discovered,  in  those  swamps.  If  she  were  over 
there  now,  lying  quite  quiet  on  the  higher  ground  by 
the  ditch,  quite  quiet  and  alone,  she  would  hear  him 
presently,  solemnly  booming. 

"Whom  will  the  Little  One  invite?"  asked  Herr 
Dremmel,  bending  down  across  the  whole  of  the  Milky 
Way  and  every  single  one  of  all  the  multitude  of  scents 
the  night  was  softly  throwing  against  her  face. 

He  kissed  her  very  kindly  and  at  unusual  length. 
It  lasted  so  long  that  she  missed  the  smell  of  an  entire 
clover  field. 

"Your  mother,"  said  Ingeborg,  when  she  again 
emerged. 

"Heavens  and  earth!"  said  Herr  Dremmel. 

"I  know  now  what  I  did — or  rather  didn't  do.  I 
know  now  why  she  kept  on  saying  Bratkartoffel.  Oh, 
Robert,  she  must  have  been  hurt.  She  must  have 
thought  I  didn't  care  a  bit.  And  I  did  so  want  her 
to  be  happy.    Why  didn't  you  tell  me?" 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  185 

"Tell  you  what,  little  sheep?" 

"About  there  having  to  be  supper,  and  about  her 
having  to  go  to  bed." 

"To  bed?" 

"Did  the  Baron  put  you?" 

"Put  me?" 

"To  bed?" 

Herr  Dremmel  bent  down  again  and  looked  a  little 
anxiously  at  as  much  of  her  face  as  he  could  see  in  the 
moonlight.  It  seemed  normal;  not  in  the  least  flushed 
or  feverish.  He  touched  her  cheek  with  his  finger.  It 
was  cool. 

"Little  One,"  he  said,  "what  is  this  talk  of  beds?" 

"Only  that  it  would  save  rather  a  lot  of  awful  things 
happening  if  you  would  just  give  me  an  idea  before- 
hand of  what  is  expected.  It  wouldn't  take  a  minute. 
I  wouldn't  disturb  you  at  your  work  for  anything,  but 
at  some  odd  time — breakfast,  for  instance,  or  while 
you're  shaving — if  you'd  say  about  beds  and  things 
like  that.  One  couldn't  guess  it,  you  know.  In  Red- 
chester  one  didn't  do  it,  you  see.  And  it's  such  a  really 
beautiful  arrangement.  Oh"  —she  suddenly  flung  her 
arms  round  him  and  held  him  tight —  "I  am  glad  I 
married  one  of  you!" 

"One  of  me?" 

Herr  Dremmel  again  peered  anxiously  at  her  face. 

"One  of  you  wonderful  people — you  magnificent, 
spacious  people.  In  Redchester  we  got  rid  of  difficulties 
by  running  away.  You  face  them  and  overcome  them. 
There  isn't  much  doubt,  is  there,  which  is  the  finer?" 

He  transferred  his  cigar  to  the  hand  that  was  round 
her  shoulder  and  spread  his  right  one  largely  over  her 
forehead.    It  was  quite  cool. 

"Who,"  went  on  Ingcborg  enthusiastically,  jerking 


186  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

her  head  away  from  his  hand,  "would  have  a  custom 
that  makes  calls  last  five  hours  without  rebelling?  You 
are  too  splendidly  disciplined  to  rebel.  You  don't. 
You  just  set  about  finding  some  way  of  making  the 
calls  endurable,  and  you  hit  on  the  nicest  way.  I  loved 
that  hour  in  bed.  If  only  I'd  known  that  the  other 
day  when  your  mother  came !    The  relief  of  it.    .    .    ." 

"But  my  mother "  began  Herr  Dremmel  in  a 

puzzled  voice.  Then  he  added  with  a  touch  of  severity, 
"Your  remarks,  my  treasure,  are  not  in  your  usual 
taste.    You  forget  my  mother  is  a  widow." 

"Oh?     Don't  widows?" 

"Do  not  widows  what?" 

"Go  to  bed?" 

"Now  kindly  tell  me,"  he  said,  with  an  impatience 
he  concealed  beneath  calm,  for  he  had  heard  that  a 
husband  who  wishes  to  become  successfully  a  father 
has  to  accommodate  himself  to  many  moods,  "what 
it  is  you  are  really  talking  about." 

"Why,  about  your  not  explaining  things  to  me  in 
time." 

"What  things?" 

"About  your  mother  having  to  go  to  bed." 
'Why  should  my  mother  have  to  go  to  bed?" 

"Oh,  Robert — because  it's  the  custom." 

"It  is  not.    Why  do  you  suppose  it  is  the  custom?" 

"What?  When  I've  just  been  put  there?  And  you 
saw  me  go?" 

"  Ingeborg " 


"Oh,  don't  call  me  Ingeborg " 

"Ingeborg,  this  is  levity.  I  am  prepared  for  much 
accommodating  of  myself  to  whims  in  regard  to  food 
and  kindred  matters,  but  am  I  to  endure  levity  for 
nine  months?" 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  187 

She  stared  at  him. 

"You  went  to  bed  because  you  were  ill,"  he  said. 

"I  wasn't,"  she  said  indignantly.  Did  he,  too, 
think  she  did  not  know  how  to  control  herself  in  the 
presence  of  cake? 

"What?     You  were  not?" 

There  was  a  note  of  such  sharp  disappointment  in 
his  voice  that  in  her  turn  she  peered  at  his  face. 

"Now  kindly  tell  me,  Robert,"  she  said,  giving  his 
sleeve  a  slight  pull,  "what  it  is  you  are  really  talking 
about." 

'You  did  not  feel  faint?  You  feel  quite  well?  You 
do  not  feel  ill  after  all?" 

Again  the  note  of  astonished  disappointment. 

"But  why  should  I  feel  ill?" 

'Then  why  did  you  ask  to  be  taken  home  almost 
before  we  had  arrived?" 

For  the  first  time  she  heard  anger  in  his  voice,  anger 
and  a  great  aggrievedness. 

"Almost  before  we'd  arrived?  We'd  been  there 
hours.    You  hadn't  told  me  a  call  meant  supper." 

"Almighty  Heaven,"  he  cried,  "am  I  to  dwell  on 
every  detail  of  life?  Am  I  personally  to  conduct  you 
over  each  of  the  inches  of  your  steps?  Do  you  regard 
me  as  an  elementary  school?  Can  you  not  imagine? 
Can  you  not  calculate  probabilities?  Can  you  not 
construct  some  searchlight  of  inference  of  your  own, 
and  illuminate  with  it  the  outline  of  at  least  the  next 
few  hours?" 

She  gazed  at  him  a  moment  in  astonishment. 

"  Well,"  she  said. 

If  her  father  had  asked  her  only  one  of  these  questions 
in  that  sort  of  voice  she  would  have  been  without  an 
answer,  beaten  down  and  crushed.    But  Robert  had  not 


188  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

had  the  steady  continuous  frightening  of  her  from 
babyhood.  He  could  not  hold  over  her,  like  an  awful 
rod,  that  she  owed  her  very  existence  to  him.  He 
could  not  claim  perpetual  gratitude  for  this  remote 
tremendous  gift,  bestowed  on  her  in  the  days  of  her 
unconsciousness.  He  was  a  kindly  stranger  appointed 
by  the  Church  to  walk  hand  in  hand  with  her  along 
the  path  of  grown-up  life.  He  had  admired  her,  and 
kissed  her,  and  quite  often  during  their  engagement 
had  abased  himself  at  her  feet.  Also  she  had  seen  him 
at  moments  such  as  shaving. 

"I  believe,"  she  said  after  another  astonished  pause, 
"that  you're  scolding  me.  And  you're  scolding  me 
because  you're  angry  with  me,  and  you're  angry  with 
me — Robert,  is  it  possible  you're  angry  with  me  because 
I'm  not  ill?" 

He  threw  away  his  cigar  and  seized  her  in  his  arms 
and  began  to  whisper  voluminously  into  her  ear. 

"What?"  she  kept  on  saying.  "What?  You're 
tickling  me — what?     I  can't  hear " 

But  she  did  in  the  end  hear,  and  drew  herself  a  little 
back  from  him  to  look  at  him  with  a  new  interest.  It 
seemed  the  oddest  thing  that  he,  so- busy,  so  nearly 
always  somewhere  else  in  thought,  so  deeply  and  fre- 
quently absent  from  the  surface  of  life,  so  entirely 
occupied  by  his  work  that  often  he  could  hardly  re- 
member he  had  a  wife,  should  want  to  have  yet  another 
object  of  the  kind  added  unto  him,  a  child;  and  that 
she  who  lived  altogether  on  the  surface,  who  knew,  as 
it  were,  the  very  taste  of  each  of  the  day's  minutes 
and  possessed  them  all,  who  never  lost  consciousness 
of  the  present  and  never  for  an  instant  let  go  of  her 
awareness  of  the  visible  and  the  now,  should  be  without 
any  such  desire. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  189 

"But,"  she  said,  "we're  so  happy.    We're  so  happy 


as  we  are." 


"It  is  nothing  compared  to  what  we  would  be." 
"But  I  haven't  even  begun  to  get  used  to  this  hap- 
piness yet — to  the  one  I've  got." 

"You  will  infinitely  prefer  the  one  that  is  yet  to 


come." 


"But  Robert — don't  rush  me  along.  Don't  let  us 
rush  past  what  we've  got.  Let  us  love  all  this  thor- 
oughly first " 

He  looked  at  her  very  gravely.  'We  have  now  been 
married  two  months,"  he  said.  "I  become  anxious. 
To-night — I  cannot  tell  you  how  glad  I  was.  And 
then — it  was  nothing  after  all." 

She  gazed  at  him  with  a  feeling  of  a  new  incumbency. 
He  had  said  the  last  words  in  a  voice  she  did  not  know, 
with  a  catch  in  it. 

"Robert "    she    said   quickly,   putting    out    her 

hand  and  touching  his  with  a  little  soft  stroking  move- 
ment. 

She  wished  above  all  things  to  make  him  perfectly 
happy.  Always  she  had  loved  making  people  happy. 
And  she  was  so  grateful  to  him,  so  grateful  for  the 
freedom  she  had  got  through  him,  that  just  her  grati- 
tude even  if  she  had  not  loved  him  would  have  made 
her  try  to  do  and  be  everything  he  wished.  But  she 
did  love  him.  She  certainly  loved  him.  And  here  was 
something  he  seemed  to  want  beyond  everything,  and 
that  she  alone  could  provide  him  with. 

He  turned  his  head  away;  and  as  he  did  this  did  she 
see  something  actually  glistening  in  his  eyes,  glistening 
like  something  wet? 

In  an  instant  she  had  put  her  arms  round  him.  "Of 
course  I  do — of  course  I  want  one,"  she  said,  rubbing 


190  THE  PASTORS  WIFE 

her  cheek  up  and  down  his  mackintosh,  "some — heaps 
— of  course  we'll  have  them — everybody  has  them — 
of  course  I'll  soon  begin — don't  mind  my  not  having 
been  ill  to-night — I'm  so  sorry — I  will  be  ill — dear 
Robert — I  didn't  know  I  had  to  be  ill — but  I  will  be 
soon — I'm  sure  I  will  be — I — I  feel  quite  like  soon 
being  ill  now " 

He  patted  her  face,  his  face  still  turned  away.  "  Good 
little  wife,"  he  said;   "good  little  wife." 

She  felt  nearer  to  him  than  she  had  ever  felt,  so  close 
in  understanding  and  sympathy.  She  had  seen  tears, 
a  man's  tears.  Of  what  tremendous  depths  of  feeling 
were  they  not  the  signal?  The  sentence,  A  strong  man's 
tears,  floated  up  from  somewhere  and  hung  about  her 
mind.  She  pressed  him  to  her  in  a  passion  of  desire  to 
make  him  altogether  happy,  to  protect  him  from  feeling 
too  much.  She  held  him  like  that,  her  cheek  against 
his  arm,  rubbing  it  up  and  down  every  now  and  then 
to  show  how  well  she  understood,  till  they  got  home. 
When  he  lifted  her  down  from  the  carriage  at  their 
door  she  slipped  her  hand  round  the  back  of  his  neck 
and  kept  it  there  a  moment  with  the  tenderest  lingering 
touch. 

"Dear  Robert,"  she  whispered,  her  lips  on  his  ear 
while  he  lifted  her  down;  and  implicit  in  the  words  was 
the  mother-assurance,  the  yearning  mother-promise, 
"Oh,  little  thing,  little  man  thing,  I'll  take  care  of  you." 

She  hung  about  the  parlour  and  the  passage  while 
he  went,  as  he  said,  for  a  moment  into  his  laboratory 
for  a  final  look  round,  waiting  for  him  in  a  strangely 
warmed  exalted  state,  entirely  at  one  with  him,  sud- 
denly very  intimate,  sure  that  after  letting  her  see  things 
so  sacred  as  tears  he  would  only  want  to  spend  the  rest 
of  the  evening  with  her,  being  comforted  and  reassured, 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  191 

held  close  to  her  heart,  talking  sweetly  with  her  in  the 
quiet  dark  garden. 

But  there  were  six  saucerfuls  of  differently  treated 
last  year's  rye  ready  on  the  laboratory  table  for  count- 
ing and  weighing.  Herr  Dremmel  beheld  them,  and 
forgot  the  world.  He  began  to  count  and  weigh.  He 
continued  to  count  and  weigh.  He  ended  by  counting 
and  weighing  them  all;  and  it  was  dawn  before,  satis- 
fied and  consoled  for  his  lost  afternoon,  it  occurred  to 
him  that  perhaps  it  might  be  bedtime. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  winter  came  before  Ingeborg,  after  many 
false  alarms  due  to  her  extreme  eagerness  to 
give  Robert  the  happiness  he  wanted,  was  able 
to  assure  him  with  certainty  that  he  would  presently 
become  a  father.  "And  I,"  she  said,  looking  at  him 
with  a  kind  of  surprised  awe  now  that  it  had  really 
come  upon  her,  "I  suppose  I  will  be  a  mother." 

Herr  Dremmel  remarked  with  dryness  that  he  sup- 
posed in  that  case  she  would,  and  refused  to  become 
enthusiastic  until  there  was  more  certainty. 

He  had  been  disappointed  during  the  summer  so 
often.  Her  zeal  to  meet  his  wishes  made  her  pounce 
upon  the  slightest  little  feeling  of  not  being  well  and 
run  triumphantly  to  his  laboratory,  daring  its  locked 
door,  defying  its  sacredness,  to  tell  him  the  great  news. 
She  would  stand  there  radiantly  saying  things  that 
sounded  like  paraphrases  of  the  Scripture,  and  almost 
the  first  German  she  really  learned  and  used  was  the 
German  so  familiar  in  every  household  for  being  of  Good 
Hope,  for  being  in  Blessed  Circumstance. 

For  some  time  Herr  Dremmel  greeted  these  tidings 
with  emotion  and  excitement;  but  as  the  summer  went 
on,  he  had  become  so  incredulous  that  she  fainted  twice 
in  December  before  he  was  convinced.  Then,  indeed, 
for  nearly  a  whole  day  his  joy  was  touching.  One  can- 
not, however,  keep  up  such  joy,  and  Ingeborg  found  that 
things  after  this  brief  upheaval  of  emotion  settled  back 

192 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  193 

again  into  how  they  were  before,  except  that  she  felt 
extraordinarily  and  persistently  ill. 

Well,  she  had  had  the  most  wonderful  summer;  she 
had  got  that  anyhow  tucked  away  up  the  sleeve  of  her 
memory,  and  could  bring  it  out  and  look  at  it  when  the 
days  were  wet  and  she  felt  cold  and  sick.  The  sum- 
mer that  year  in  East  Prussia  had  been  a  long  drought, 
a  long  bath  of  sunshine,  and  Ingeborg  lived  out  in  it 
in  an  ecstasy  of  freedom.  Her  body,  light  and  perfectly 
balanced,  did  wonders  of  exploration  in  the  mighty 
forests  that  began  at  the  north  of  the  Kokensee  lake 
and  went  on  without  stopping  to  the  sea.  She  would 
get  Robert's  dinner  ready  for  him  early,  and  then  put 
some  bread  and  butter  and  a  cucumber  into  a  knapsack 
with  her  German  grammar,  and  paddle  the  punt  down 
the  lake,  tie  it  up  where  the  trees  began,  and  start. 
Nothing  seemed  to  tire  her.  She  would  walk  for  miles 
along  the  endless  forest  tracks,  just  as  much  suited  to 
her  environment,  just  as  harmonious  and  as  much  a 
creature  of  air  and  sunshine  as  the  white  butterflies 
that  fluttered  among  the  enormous  pine  trunks.  Every 
now  and  then,  for  sheer  delight  in  these  things,  she 
would  throw  herself  down  on  the  springy  delicious 
carpet  of  whortleberries  and  lie  still  watching  the  blue- 
green  tops  of  the  pine-trees  delicately  swaying  back- 
wards and  forwards  far  away  over  her  head  against  the 
serene  northern  sky.  They  made  a  gentle  sighing  noise 
in  the  wind.  It  was  the  only  sound,  except  the  oc- 
casional cry  of  a  woodpecker  or  the  cry,  immensely 
distant,  of  a  hawk. 

Nobody  but  herself  seemed  to  use  the  forests.  It 
was  the  rarest  thing  that  she  met  a  woodman,  or 
children  picking  whortleberries.  When  she  did  she 
was  much  stared  at.     The  forests  were  quite  out  of 


194  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

the  beat  of  tourists  or  foreigners,  and  the  indigenous 
ladies  were  too  properly  occupied  by  indoor  duties  to 
wander,  even  if  they  liked  forests,  away  from  their 
home  anchorage;  and  for  those  whose  business  sent 
them  into  these  lonely  places  to  come  across  somebody 
belonging  to  the  class  that  can  have  dinner  every  day 
regularly  in  a  house  if  it  likes  and  to  the  sex  that  ought 
to  be  there  cooking,  it  was  an  amazement. 

The  young  lady,  however,  seemed  so  happy  that 
they  all  smiled  at  her  when  she  looked  at  them.  They 
supposed  she  must  be  some  one  grown  white  in  a  town, 
and  come  to  stay  the  summer  weeks  with  one  of  the 
Crown  foresters.  That  would  explain  her  detachment 
from  duty,  her  knapsack,  and  the  colour  of  her  skin. 
Anyhow,  just  her  passing  made  their  dull  day  interest- 
ing; and  they  would  watch  her  glinting  in  and  out  of 
the  trees  till  at  last,  hardly  distinguishable  from  one  of 
the  white  butterflies,  the  distance  took  her. 

When  she  was  quite  hot  she  would  sit  down  in  a  care- 
fully chosen  spot  where,  if  possible,  a  deciduous  tree,  a 
maple  or  a  bird  cherry,  splashed  its  vivid  green  ex- 
quisitely against  the  peculiar  misty  bloom  of  pink  and 
grey  that  hung  about  the  pine  trunks,  a  tree  that  looked 
quite  little  down  among  these  giants,  hardly  as  if  it 
reached  to  their  knees,  and  yet  when  she  stood  under 
it  it  was  almost  as  big  as  the  lime-trees  in  the  Kokensee 
garden.  She  did  not  sit  in  its  shade;  she  went  some 
distance  away  where  she  could  look  at  it  quivering  in 
the  light,  and  leaning  her  back  against  a  pine-tree  she 
would  eat  her  bread  and  cucumber  and  feel  utterly 
filled  with  the  love  and  glory  of  God. 

Impossible  to  reason  about  this  feeling.  It  was 
there.  It  seemed  in  that  summer  to  go  with  her  where- 
ever  she  went  and  whatever  she  did.     She  walked  in 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  195 

blessing.  It  was  in  the  light,  she  thought,  looking 
round  her,  the  wonderful  light,  the  soft  radiance  of  the 
forest;  it  was  in  the  air,  warm  and  fresh,  scented  and 
pungent;  it  was  in  the  feel  of  the  pine  needles  and  the 
dry  crisp  last  year's  cones  she  crushed  as  she  went  along; 
it  was  in  the  cushions  of  moss  so  green  and  cool  that 
she  stopped  to  pat  them,  or  in  the  hot  lichen  that  came 
off  in  flakes  when  her  feet  brushed  a  root;  it  was  in  being 
young  and  healthy  and  having  had  one's  dinner  and 
sitting  quiet  and  getting  rested  and  knowing  the  hours 
ahead  were  roomy;  it  was  in  all  these  things,  everywhere 
and  in  everything.  She  would  pick  up  her  German 
grammar  in  a  quick  desire  to  do  something  in  return, 
something  that  gave  her  real  trouble — shall  one  not 
say  somehow  Thank  you  ? — and  she  engulfed  huge  tracts 
of  it  on  these  expeditions,  learning  pages  of  it  by 
heart  and  repeating  them  aloud  to  the  pine-trees  and 
the  woodpeckers. 

When  the  sun  began  to  go  down  she  set  out  for  home, 
sometimes  losing  her  way  for  quite  a  long  while,  and 
then  she  would  hurry  because  of  Robert's  supper,  and 
then  she  would  get  very  hot;  and  the  combined  heat 
and  hurry  and  cucumber,  to  which  presently  was  added 
fatigue,  would  end  in  one  of  those  triumphal  appear- 
ances later  on  in  his  laboratory  to  which  he  was  growing 
so  much  accustomed. 

In  January,  when  she  was  just  a  sick  thing,  she 
thought  of  these  days  as  something  too  beautiful  to 
have  really  happened. 

There  was  from  the  first  no  shyness  about  her  on 
the  subject  of  babies.  She  had  not  considered  it  during 
her  life  at  home,  lor  babies  were  never  mentioned  at 
the  Palace — of  course,  she  thought,  remembering  this 
omission,  because  there  were  none,  and  it  would  be  as 


196  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

meaningless  to  talk  about  babies  when  there  were  none 
as  it  would  be  in  Kokensee  to  talk  about  bishops  when 
there  were  none.  She  arrived,  therefore,  at  Kokensee 
with  her  mind  a  blank  from  prejudice,  and  finding  the 
atmosphere  thick  with  babies  immediately  with  her 
usual  uninquiring  pliability  adopted  the  prevailing  atti- 
tude and  was  not  shy  either. 

The  neighbourhood  did  not  wait  till  they  were  born 
to  talk  about  its  own  children.  It  did  not  think  of  its 
children  as  unmentionable  until  they  had  been  baptised 
into  decency  by  birth.  They  were  important  things, 
the  most  important  of  all  in  the  life  of  the  women,  and 
it  was  natural  to  discuss  them  thoroughly.  The  child- 
less woman  was  a  pitied  creature.  The  woman  who 
had  most  children  was  proudest.  She  might  be  poor 
and  tormented  by  them,  but  it  was  something  she 
possessed  more  of  than  her  neighbours.  Use  had  early 
inquired  which  room  would  be  the  nursery.  That 
obvious  pattern  of  respectability,  Baroness  Glambeck, 
talked  of  births  with  a  detail  and  interest  only  second 
to  that  with  which  she  talked  of  deaths.  It  seemed  to 
her  a  most  proper  topic  of  conversation  with  any  young 
married  woman;  and  on  her  returning  the  Dremmel 
call  a  fortnight  after  it  had  been  made  she  was  quite 
taken  aback  and  annoyed  to  find  it  had  become  irrele- 
vant owing  to  Ingeborg's  being  perfectly  well. 

Indeed,  this  failure  of  Ingeborg's  entirely  spoilt  the 
visit.  The  Baroness,  who  had  arrived  friendly,  with- 
drew into  frost  with  the  manner  of  one  who  felt  she 
had  been  thawed  on  the  last  occasion  on  false  pretences. 
Impossible  to  meet  one's  pastor's  wife — and  such  an 
odd-looking  and  free-mannered  one,  too — with  any 
familiarity  except  on  the  Christian  footing  of  impend- 
ing birth  or  death.     A  pastor's  wife  belonged  to  the 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  197 

class  one  is  only  really  pleasant  with  in  suffering  or 
guilt.  Offended,  yet  forced  to  continue  the  call,  the 
Baroness  confined  such  conversation  as  she  made  to 
questions  that  had  a  flavour  of  hostility:  where  was  it 
possible  to  get  such  shoes,  and  did  the  Frau  Pastor 
think  toes  so  narrow  good  for  the  circulation  and  the 
housework? 

Ingeborg  could  not  believe  this  was  the  motherly 
lady  who  had  fussed  round  her  bed  that  dav  at  Glam- 
beck.  She  felt  set  away  at  a  great  distance  from  her, 
on  the  other  side  of  a  gulf.  For  the  first  time  it  was 
borne  in  upon  her  that  her  marriage  made  a  difference 
to  her  socially,  that  here  in  Germany  the  gulf  was  a 
wide  one.  She  was  a  pastor's  wife;  and  when  asked 
about  her  family,  which  happened  early  and  searchingly 
in  the  call,  could  only  give  an  impression  of  more 
pastors. 

"Ah,  that  is  the  same  as  what  we  call  superinten- 
dent," said  the  Baroness,  nodding  several  times  slowly 
on  learning  that  Ingeborg's  father  was  a  bishop;  and 
after  a  series  of  questions  as  to  the  Frau  Pastor's  sister's 
marriage  nodded  her  head  slowly  several  times  again, 
and  informed  Ingeborg  that  what  her  sister  had  mar- 
ried was  a  schoolmaster.  "Like  Herr  Schultz,"  said 
the  Baroness — Herr  Schultz  being  the  village  school- 
master. 

There  wras  a  photograph  of  Judith  on  the  table 
that  caught  and  kept  the  Baroness's  eye  and  also,  in  an 
even  greater  but  more  careful  degree,  the  Baron's.  It 
was  Judith  dressed  in  evening  beauty,  bare-necked,  per- 
fect. 

Ingeborg  took  it  up  with  a  natural  pride  in  having 
such  a  lovely  thins  for  her  very  own  sister  and  handed 
it  to  the  Baroness. 


198  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"Here  she  is,"  said  Ingeborg,  full  of  natural  pride. 

The  Baroness  stared  in  real  consternation. 

"What?"  she  said.  "This  is  a  schoolmaster's  wife? 
This  is  our  pastor's  sister-in-law?     I  had  thought " 

She  broke  off,  and  with  a  firm  gesture  put  the  photo- 
graph on  the  table  again  and  said  she  could  not  stay  to 
supper. 

Since  then  there  had  been  no  intercourse  with  Glam- 
beck,  and  the  Baroness  did  not  know  of  the  satisfactory 
turn  things  had  taken  at  the  parsonage  till  on  Christmas 
Eve,  from  her  gallery  in  church  to  which  she  and  the 
Baron  had  decided  to  return  on  the  greater  festivals  as 
a  mark  of  their  awareness  that  Herr  Dremmel  desired 
to  make  amends,  she  beheld  during  the  drawn-out  verses 
of  the  chorale  Ingeborg  drop  sideways  on  the  seat  in  her 
pew  below  and  remain  motionless  and  bunched  up, 
her  hymn-book  pushed  crooked  on  the  desk  in  front 
of  her,  and  her  attitude  one  of  complete  indifference  to 
appearances. 

The  Baroness  did  not  nudge  the  Baron,  because  in 
her  position  one  does  not  nudge,  but  her  instinct  was 
all  for  nudging. 

Herr  Dremmel  could  not  see  what  had  happened, 
custom  concealing  him  during  the  singing  in  a  wooden 
box  at  the  foot  of  the  pulpit  where  he  was  busy  im- 
agining agricultural  experiments.  Till  he  came  out 
the  singing  went  on;  and  suppose,  thought  the  Baroness, 
he  were  to  forget  to  come  out?  Once  he  had  forgotten, 
she  had  heard,  and  had  stayed  in  his  box,  having  very 
unfortunately  been  visited  there  by  a  revelation  con- 
cerning potash  that  caught  him  up  into  oblivion  for 
the  best  part  of  an  hour,  during  which  the  chorale  was 
gone  through  with  an  increasing  faintness  fifteen  times. 
She  knew  about  the  hour,  but  did  not  know  it  was  pot- 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  199 

ash.  Suppose  he  once  again  fell  into  a  meditation? 
There  was  no  verger,  beadle,  pew-opener,  or  official 
person  of  any  sort  to  take  action.  The  congregation 
would  do  nothing  that  was  outside  the  customary  and 
the  prescribed.  There  was  no  female  relative  such  as 
the  Frau  Pastor  would  have  had  staying  with  her  over 
Christmas  if  she  had  been  what  she  ought  to  have  been, 
and  what  every  other  pastor's  wife  so  felicitously  was, 
a  German.  And  for  her  herself  to  descend  and  help 
in  the  eyes  of  all  Kokensee  would  have  been  too  great  a 
condescension,  besides  involving  her  in  difficulties  with 
the  wife  of  the  forester,  and  the  wife  of  the  Glambeck 
schoolmaster,  who  was  also  the  postman,  both  of  whom 
were  of  the  same  social  standing  as  the  younger  Frau 
Dremmel  and  would  jealously  resent  the  least  mark  of 
what  they  would  interpret  as  special  favour. 

Herr  Dremmel,  however,  came  out  punctually  and 
went  up  into  the  pulpit  and  opened  his  well-worn 
manuscript  and  read  out  the  well-known  text,  and  the 
congregation  sat  as  nearly  thrilled  as  it  could  be  wait- 
ing for  the  moment  when  his  eye  would  fall  on  to  his 
own  pew  and  what  was  in  it.  Would  he  interrupt 
the  service  to  go  down  and  carry  his  wife  out?  Would 
the  congregation  have  to  wait  till  he  came  back  again, 
or  would  it  be  allowed  to  disperse  to  its  Christmas  trees 
and  rejoicings? 

Ilerr  Dremmel  read  on  and  on,  expounding  the  in- 
nocent Christmas  story,  describing  ils  white  accessories 
of  flocks  and  angels  and  virgins  and  stars  with  the 
thunderous  vehemence  near  scolding  that  had  become 
a  habit  with  him  when  he  preached.  His  text  was 
Peace  on  earth,  goodwill  among  men,  and  from  custom  he 
hit  his  desk  with  his  clenched  fist  while  he  read  il  out  and 
hurled  it  at  his  congregation  as  if  it  were  a  threat. 


200  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

He  did  not  look  in  his  wife's  direction.  He  was  not 
thinking  of  her  at  all.  He  wondered  a  little  at  the 
stillness  and  attention  of  his  listeners.  Nobody  coughed. 
Nobody  shuffled.  The  school  children  hung  over  the 
edge  of  the  organ  loft,  motionless  and  intent.  Baron 
Glambeck  remained  awake. 

At  the  end  of  the  service  Herr  Dremmel  had  to  stay 
according  to  custom  in  his  wooden  box  till  every  one 
had  gone,  and  it  was  not  till  he  came  out  of  that  to  go 
through  the  church  to  its  only  door  that  he  perceived 
Ingeborg.  For  a  moment  he  thought  she  was  waiting 
for  him  in  an  attitude  of  inappropriately  childish 
laxity,  and  he  was  about  to  rebuke  her  when  it  flashed 
upon  him  that  she  had  fainted,  that  it  was  the  second 
time  in  ten  days,  and  that  he  was  indeed  and  without 
any  doubt  at  last  the  happiest  of  men. 

In  spite  of  the  bitter  wind  that  was  raking  the  church- 
yard every  person  who  had  been  inside  the  church  was 
waiting  outside  to  see  the  pastor  come  out.  The  Glam- 
becks  and  elders  of  the  church  would  have  waited  in  any 
case  on  Christmas  Eve  to  wish  him  the  compliments  of 
the  season  and  receive  his  in  return,  but  on  this  occasion 
they  waited  with  pleasure  as  well  as  patience,  and  the 
rest  of  the  congregation  waited,  too. 

They  were  rewarded  by  seeing  him  presently  appear 
in  the  doorway  in  his  gown  and  bands  carrying  the 
bundle  that  was  the  still  unconscious  Frau  Pastor  as  if 
she  were  a  baby,  his  face  illuminated  with  joy  and 
pride.  It  was  as  entertaining  as  a  funeral.  Double 
congratulations  were  poured  upon  him,  double  and 
treble  handshakes  of  the  hand  he  protruded  for  the 
purpose  from  beneath  Ingeborg's  relaxed  body,  and  his 
spectacles  as  he  responded  were  misty,  to  the  immense 
gratification  of  the  crowd,  with  happy  tears. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  201 

This  was  the  first  popular  thing  Ingeborg  had  done 
since  her  arrival.  She  could  not  if  she  had  planned  it 
out  with  all  her  care  and  wits  have  achieved  anything 
more  dramatically  ingratiating.  The  day  was  the  most 
appropriate  day  in  the  whole  year.  It  had  been  well 
worth  waiting,  thought  her  overjoyed  Robert,  in  order 
to  receive  such  a  Christmas  gift.  The  Baroness,  who 
with  the  Baron  was  most  cordial,  felt  flattered,  as  if — ■ 
only  of  course  less  perfectly,  for  she  herself  had  pro- 
duced her  children  in  actual  time  for  the  tree — her  ex- 
ample had  been  taken  to  heart  and  followed.  The 
village  was  deeply  gratified  to  see  an  unconscious  Frau 
Pastor  carried  through  its  midst,  and  her  limp  body  had 
all  the  prestige  of  a  corpse.  Everybody  was  moved  and 
pleased;  and  when  Ingeborg,  after  much  persuasion, 
woke  up  to  the  world  again  on  the  sofa  of  the  parsonage 
parlour  it  was  to  live  through  the  happiest  day  she  had 
yet  had  in  her  life,  the  day  of  Robert's  greatest  joy  in 
her  and  devotion  and  care  and  pride  and  petting. 

Once  more  and  for  this  day  she  outstripped  the 
fertilizers  in  interest,  and  the  laboratory  was  a  place 
forgotten.  She  was  pampered.  She  lay  on  the  sofa, 
feeling  quite  well  again,  but  staying  obediently  on  it 
because  he  told  her  to  and  she  loved  him  to  care,  watch- 
ing him  with  happy  eyes  as  he  tremendously  hovered. 
He  finished  the  arranging  of  the  tree  for  her  and  fixed 
the  candles  on  it,  interrupting  himself  every  now  and 
then  to  come  and  kiss  her  hands  and  pat  her.  Beams 
seemed  to  proceed  from  him  and  penetrate  into  the 
remotest  corners.  In  a  land  where  all  homes  were 
glowing  that  Christmas  night  this  little  home  glowed 
the  brightest.  The  candles  of  the  tree  shone  down  on 
Ingeborg  curled  up  in  the  sola  corner,  talking  and 
laughing  gaily,  but  with  an  infinitely  proud  and  solemn 


202  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

gladness  in  her  heart  that  at  last  he  believed,  that  at 
last  she  was  fairly  started  on  the  road  o.f  the  Higher 
Duty,  that  at  last  she  was  going  to  be  able  to  do  some- 
thing back,  something  in  return  for  all  this  happiness 
that  had  come  to  her  through  and  because  of  him. 

Use  was  called  in,  and  came  very  rosy  and  shining 
from  careful  washing  to  be  given  her  presents.  There 
were  surprises  for  Ingeborg — she  had  to  shut  her  eyes 
while  they  were  arranged — that  touched  and  astonished 
her,  so  totally  blind  had  Robert  seemed  to  be  for  weeks 
past  to  anything  outside  his  work — a  pot  of  hyacinths 
twisted  about  with  pink  crinkly  paper  and  satin  bows 
that  he  must  have  got  with  immense  difficulty  and 
elaborate  precautions  to  prevent  her  seeing  it,  a  volume 
of  Heine's  poetry,  a  pair  of  fur  gloves,  a  silver  curb 
bracelet,  and  a  smiling  pig  of  marzipan  with  a  label 
round  its  neck,  Ich  bring e  Glilck.  She,  not  realising 
what  a  German  Christmas  meant,  had  only  a  cigar- 
case  for  him ;  and  when,  her  lap  full  of  his  presents  and 
her  wrist  decorated  with  the  bracelet  in  which  he  showed 
an  honest  pride,  carefully  explaining  the  trick  of  its 
fastening  and  assuring  her  it  was  real  silver  and  that 
little  women,  he  well  knew,  liked  being  hung  with  these 
barbaric  splendours,  she  put  her  arm  round  his  neck 
and  apologised  for  her  dreadful  ignorance  of  custom 
and  want  of  imagination  and  solitary,  unsurprising, 
miserable  cigar-case — when  she  did  this,  with  her  cheek 
laid  on  his  furry  head,  he  drew  her  very  close  to  him 
and  blessed  her,  blessed  her  his  little  wife  and  that 
greatest  of  gifts  that  she  was  bringing  him. 

Both  of  them  had  wet  eyes  when  this  blessing,  sol- 
emnly administered  and  received,  was  over.  It  was  done 
in  the  presence  of  Use,  who  looked  on  benevolently 
and  at  the  end  came  and  shook  their  hands  and  joined 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  203 

to  her  thanks  for  what  she  had  been  given  her  con- 
gratulations on  the  happy  event  of  the  coming  summer. 

"July,"  said  Use,  after  a  moment's  reflection.  "We 
must  furnish  that  room,"  she  added. 

Ingeborg  felt  as  though  her  very  bones  were  soft 
with  love. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

BUT  these  high  moments  of  swimming  in  warm 
emotion  do  not  last,  she  found;  they  are  not 
final,  they  are  not,  as  she  had  fondly  believed, 
a  state  of  understanding  and  cloudless  love  at  last 
attained  to  and  rested  in  radiantly.  She  discovered 
that  the  littlest  thing  puts  an  end  to  them,  just  such 
a  little  thing  as  its  being  bedtime,  for  instance,  is 
enough,  and  the  mood  does  not  return,  and  not  only 
does  it  not  return  but  it  seems  forgotten. 

She  became  aware  of  this  next  morning  at  breakfast, 
and  it  caused  at  first  an  immense  surprise.  She  had 
got  the  coffee  ready  with  the  glow  of  the  evening  before 
still  warming  her  rosily,  she  was  still  altogether  thinking 
dear  Robert,  and  wondering,  her  head  on  one  side  as  she 
cut  the  bread — Use  was  a  little  cross  after  the  marzipan 
— and  a  smile  on  her  lips,  at  the  happiness  the  world 
contains;  and  when  he  came  in  she  ran  to  him,  shiningly 
ready  to  take  up  the  mood  at  the  exact  point  where 
bedtime  had  broken  it  off  the  night  before. 

But  Herr  Dremmel  had  travelled  a  thousand  miles 
in  thought  since  then.  He  hardly  saw  her.  He  kissed 
her  mechanically  and  sat  down  to  eat.  To  him  she  was 
as  everyday  and  usual  again  as  the  bread  and  coffee  of 
his  breakfast.  She  was  his  wife  who  was  going  presently 
to  be  a  mother.  It  was  normal,  ordinary,  and  satis- 
factory; and  the  matter  being  settled  and  the  proper 
first  joy  and  sentiment  felt,  he  could  go  on  with  more 

204 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  205 

concentration  than  ever  with  his  work,  for  there  would 
not  now  be  the  perturbing  moments  so  frequent  in  the 
last  six  months  when  his  wife's  condition,  or  rather 
negation  of  condition,  had  thrust  itself  with  the  annoy- 
ance of  an  irrepressible  weed  up  among  his  thinking. 
The  matter  was  settled;  and  he  put  it  aside  as  every 
worker  must  put  the  extraneous  aside.  Just  on  this 
morning  he  was  profoundly  concerned  with  the  function 
of  potash  in  the  formation  of  carbohydrates.  He  had 
sat  up  late — long  after  Ingeborg,  feeling  as  if  she  were 
dissolved  in  stars  and  happily  certain  that  Robert  felt 
just  as  liquidly  starry,  had  gone  to  bed — considering 
potash.  He  wanted  more  starch  in  his  grain,  more 
woody-fibre  in  his  straw.  She  was  not  across  the  pass- 
age into  their  bedroom  before  his  mind  had  sprung  back 
to  potash.  More  starch  in  his  grain,  more  woody-fibre 
in  his  straw,  less  fungoid  disease  on  his  mangels.     .     .     . 

At  breakfast  his  thoughts  were  so  sticky  with  the 
glucose  and  cane  sugar  of  digestible  carbohydrates 
that  he  could  not  even  get  them  free  for  his  newspaper, 
but  sat  quite  silently  munching  bread  and  butter,  his 
eyes  on  his  plate. 

'Well,  Robert?"  said  Ingeborg,  smiling  at  him  round 
the  coffee  pot,  a  smile  in  which  lurked  the  joyful  im- 
portance of  the  evening  before. 

"Well,  Little  One?"  he  said  absently,  not  looking  at 
her. 

'Well,  Robert?"  she  said  again,  challengingly. 

'What  is  it,  Little  One?"  he  asked,  looking  up  with 
the  slight  irritation  of  the  interrupted. 

'What?  You're  not  pleased  any  more?"  she  asked, 
pretending  indignation. 

"Pleased  about  what?" 

She  stared  at  him  at  this  without  pretending  anything. 


206  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"About  what?"  she  repeated,  her  lips  dropping  apart. 

He  had  forgotten. 

She  thought  this  really  very  extraordinary.  She 
poured  herself  out  a  cup  of  coffee  slowly,  thinking. 
He  had  forgotten.  The  thing  he  had  said  so  often 
that  he  wanted  most  was  a  thing  he  could  forget,  once 
he  had  the  certain  promise  of  it,  in  a  night.  The  candles 
on  the  Christmas  tree  in  the  corner  were  not  more 
burned  out  and  finished  than  his  tender  intensity  of 
feeling  of  the  evening  before. 

Well,  that  was  Robert.  That  was  the  way,  of  course, 
of  clever  men.  But — the  tears?  He  had  felt  enough 
for  tears.  It  was  without  a  doubt  that  he  had  felt 
tremendously.  How  wonderful  then,  she  thought, 
slowly  dropping  sugar  into  her  cup,  for  even  the  memory 
of  it  to  be  wiped  out! 

Well,  that,  too,  was  Robert.  He  did  not  cling  as  she 
did  to  moments,  but  passed  on  intelligently;  and  she 
was  merely  stupid  to  suppose  any  one  with  his  brains 
would  linger,  would  loiter  about  with  her  indefinitely, 
gloating  over  their  happiness. 

She  left  her  coffee  and  got  up  and  went  over  to  him 
and  kissed  him.  "Dear  Robert,"  she  murmured, 
accommodating  herself  to  him,  proud  even,  now,  that 
he  could  be  so  deeply  preoccupied  with  profound 
thoughts  as  to  forget  an  event  so  really  great:  for  after 
all,  a  child  to  be  born,  a  new  life  to  be  launched,  was 
not  that  something  really  great?  Yet  his  thoughts, 
her  husband's  thoughts,  were  greater. 

"Dear  Robert,"  she  murmured;  and  kissed  him 
proudly. 

But  the  winter,  in  spite  of  these  convictions  of  hap- 
piness and  of  having  every  reason  for  pride,  was  a  time 
that  she  dragged  through  with  difficulty.     She  who 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  207 

had  never  thought  of  her  body,  who  had  found  in  it 
the  perfect  instrument  for  carrying  out  her  will,  was 
forced  to  think  of  it  almost  continuously.  It  mastered 
her.  She  had  endlessly  to  humour  it  before  she  could 
use  it  even  a  little.  She  seemed  for  ever  to  be  having 
to  take  it  to  a  sofa  and  lay  it  down  flat  and  not  make 
it  do  anything.  She  seemed  for  ever  to  be  trying  to 
persuade  it  that  it  did  not  mind  the  smell  of  the  pig,  or 
the  smell  that  came  across  from  Glambeck  when  the 
wind  was  that  way  of  potato  spirits  being  made  in  the 
distillery  there.  When  these  smells  got  through  the 
window  chinks  she  would  shut  her  eyes  and  think  hard 
of  the  scent  of  roses  and  pinks,  and  of  that  lovely  orange 
scent  of  the  orange-coloured  lupin  she  had  seen  grown 
everywhere  in  the  summer;  but  sooner  or  later  her 
efforts,  however  valiant,  ended  in  the  creeping  coldness, 
the  icy  perspiration,  of  sick  faintness. 

As  the  months  went  on  her  body  became  fastidious 
even  about  daily  inevitable  smells  such  as  the  roasting  of 
coffee  and  the  frying  of  potatoes,  which  was  extremely 
awkward  when  one  had  to  see  to  these  things  oneself; 
and  it  often  happened  that  Use,  coining  out  of  ihe 
scullery  or  in  from  the  yard  fresh  and  energetic  willi 
health,  would  find  her  mistress  dropped  on  a  chair  wit  h 
her  head  on  the  kitchen  table  in  quite  an  absurd  con- 
dition considering  that  everybody  assured  her  it  was 
not  an  illness  at  all  of  feeling  as  though  it  were  one. 

Use  would  look  at  her  with  a  kind  of  amused  sym- 
pathy. 'The  Frau  Pastor  will  be  worse  before  she  is 
better,"  she  would  say  cheerfully;  and  if  things  were 
very  bad  and  Ingeborg,  white  and  damp,  clung  to  her 
in  a  silent  struggle  to  feel  not  white  and  damp,  she 
used  the  formula  first  heard  on  the  lips  of  Baroness 
Glambeck    and    nodded    encouragingly,    though    not 


208  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

without  a  certain  air  of  something  that  was  a  little  like 
pleasure,  and  said,  "J a,  ja,  those  who  have  said  A 
must  also  say  B." 

When  Ingeborg's  spirit  was  at  its  lowest  in  these 
unequal  combats  she  would  droop  her  head  and  shut 
her  eyes  and  feel  she  hated — oh,  she  faintly,  coldly, 
sicklily  hated — B. 

The  fun  of  housekeeping,  of  doing  everything  your- 
self, wore  extremely  thin  during  the  next  few  months. 
She  no  longer  jumped  out  of  bed  eager  to  get  to  her 
duties  again  and  bless  the  beginning  of  each  new  day 
by  a  charming  and  cheerful  breakfast  table  for  her 
man.  She  felt  heavy;  reluctant  to  face  the  business  of 
dressing;  sure  that  no  sooner  would  she  be  on  her  feet 
than  she  would  feel  ill  again.  She  talked  of  getting 
another  servant,  a  cook;  and  Herr  Dremmel,  who  left 
these  arrangements  entirely  to  her,  agreed  at  once. 
But  when  it  came  to  taking  the  necessary  steps,  to 
advertising  or  journeying  in  to  Konigsberg  to  an 
agency,  she  flagged  and  did  nothing.  It  was  all  so 
difficult.  She  might  faint  on  the  way.  She  might  be 
sick.  And  she  could  not  ask  Robert  to  help  her  be- 
cause she  did  not  know  what  problem  nearing  a  trium- 
phant solution  she  might  not  disastrously  interrupt. 

It  seemed  to  her  monstrous  to  take  a  man  off  his 
thinking,  to  tear  its  threads,  perhaps  to  spoil  for  good 
that  particular  line  of  thought,  with  demands  that  he 
should  write  advertisements  for  a  cook  or  go  with  her 
in  search  of  one.  And  as  no  cook  was  to  be  found 
locally,  every  wife  and  mother  except  ladies  like  Bar- 
oness Glambeck  carrying  out  these  higher  domestic 
rites  herself,  she  did  nothing.  She  resigned  herself  to 
a  fate  that  was,  after  all,  everybody  else's  in  Kokensee. 
It  was  easier  to  be  resigned  than  to  be  energetic.    Her 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  209 

will  grew  very  flabby.  Once  she  said  prayers  about 
cooking,  and  asked  that  she  might  never  see  or  smell 
it  again;  but  she  broke  off  on  realising  suddenly 
and  chillily  that  only  death  could  get  her  out  of  the 
kitchen. 

Herr  Dremmel  was,  as  he  had  always  been,  good 
and  kind  to  her.  He  saw  nothing,  as  indeed  there  was 
nothing,  but  the  normal  and  the  satisfactory  in  any- 
thing she  felt,  yet  he  did  what  he  could,  whenever  he 
remembered  to,  to  cheer  and  encourage.  When,  com- 
ing out  of  his  laboratory  to  meals,  he  found  her  not  at 
the  table  but  on  the  sofa,  her  face  turned  to  the  wall  and 
buried  in  an  orange  so  that  the  dinner  smell  might  be 
in  some  small  measure  dissembled  and  cloaked,  he  often 
patted  her  before  beginning  to  eat  and  said,  "Poor 
little  woman."  One  cannot,  however,  go  on  saying 
poor  little  woman  continuously,  and  of  necessity  there 
were  gaps  in  these  sympathies;  but  at  least  twice  he 
put  off  his  return  to  work  for  a  few  minutes  in  order  to 
hearten  her  by  painting  the  great  happiness  that  was  in 
store  for  her  at  the  end  of  these  tiresome  months,  the 
marvellous  moment  not  equalled,  he  was  informed,  by 
any  other  moment  in  a  human  being's  life,  when  the 
young  mother  first  beheld  her  offspring. 

'I  see  my  little  wife  so  proud,  so  happy,"  he  would 
say;  and  each  time  the  picture  dimmed  his  eyes  and 
brought  him  over  to  her  to  stroke  her  hair. 

Then  she  would  forget  how  sick  she  felt,  and  smile 
and  be  ashamed  that  she  had  minded  anything.  The 
highest  good — what  would  not  one  practise  in  the  way 
of  being  sick  to  attain  the  highest  good? 

"And  he'll  be  full  of  brains  like  yours,"  she  would 
say,  pulling  down  his  hand  from  her  hair  and  kissing 
it  and  looking  up  at  him  smiling. 


210  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"And  I  shall  have  to  double  the  size  of  my  heart," 
Herr  Dremmel  would  say,  "to  take  in  two  loves." 

Then  Ingeborg  would  laugh  for  joy,  and  for  quite  a 
long  while  manage  very  nearly  to  glory  in  feeling  sick. 

About  March,  when  the  snow  that  had  been  heaped 
on  either  side  of  the  path  to  the  gate  all  the  winter 
began  to  dwindle  dirtily,  and  at  midday  the  eaves 
dripped  melting  icicles,  and  the  sun  had  warmth  in  it, 
and  great  winds  set  the  world  creaking,  things  got 
better.  She  no  longer  felt  the  grip  of  faintness  on  her 
heart.  She  left  off  looking  quite  so  plain  and  sharp- 
nosed.  An  increasing  dignity  attended  her  steps,  which 
every  week  were  slower  and  heavier.  After  months 
of  not  being  able  to  look  at  food  she  grew  surprisingly 
hungry,  she  became  suddenly  voracious,  and  ate  and 
ate. 

Use's  amused  interest  continued.  Her  mother  had 
had  fourteen  children  and  was  still  regularly  having 
more,  and  Use  was  well  acquainted  with  the  stages. 
The  Frau  Pastor,  it  is  true,  took  the  stages  more  se- 
riously, with  more  difficulty,  with  a  greater  stress  on 
them  than  Use's  mother  or  other  Kokensee  women,  but 
roughly  it  was  always  the  same  story.  "It  will  be 
easier  next  time*"  prophesied  Use  inspiritingly;  though 
the  thought  of  a  next  time  before  she  had  finished  this 
one  depressed  rather  than  inspirited  Ingeborg. 

She  had  written  home  to  Redchester  to  tell  her 
great  news,  and  received  a  letter  from  Mrs.  Bullivant 
in  return  in  which  there  was  an  extremity  of  absence 
of  enthusiasm.  Indeed,  the  coming  baby  was  only 
alluded  to  sideways  as  it  were,  indirectly,  and  if  written 
words  could  whisper,  in  a  whisper.  ;'  Your  father  is 
overworked,"  the  letter  went  on,  getting  away  as  quickly 
as  possible  from  matters  of  such  doubtful  decency  as  an 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  211 

unborn  German,  "he  has  too  much  to  do.  Delicate  as  I 
am,  I  would  gladly  help  him  with  his  correspondence  if  I 
could,  but  I  fear  the  strain  woidd  be  too  much.  He  sadly 
needs  a  complete  rest  and  change.  Alas,  shorthanded  as 
he  is  and  obliged  now  as  we  are  to  retrench,  there  is  no 
prospect  of  one, ," 

Whereupon  Ingeborg  impulsively  wrote  suggesting 
in  loving  and  enthusiastic  terms  a  visit  to  Kokensee  as 
the  most  complete  change  she  could  think  of,  and  also 
as  the  most  economical. 

The  answer  to  this  when  it  did  come  was  an  extraor- 
dinarily dignified  No. 

In  April  Baroness  Glambeck  drove  over  one  fine 
afternoon  and  questioned  her  as  to  her  preparations, 
and  was  astonished  to  find  there  were  none. 

"But,  my  dear  Frau  Pastor!"  she  cried,  holding  up 
both  her  yellow  kid  hands. 

"What  ought  there  to  be?"  asked  Ingeborg,  who 
had  been  too  busy  wrestling  with  her  daily  tasks  in  her 
heavily  handicapped  state  to  think  of  further  labours. 

"  Many  things — necessary,  indispensable  things." 

"What  things?"  asked  Ingeborg  faintly. 

She  had  little  spirit.  She  was  more  tired  every  day. 
Just  the  difficulty  of  keeping  even  with  her  housekeep- 
ing, of  keeping  herself  tidy  in  dresses  that  seemed  to 
shrink  smaller  each  time  she  put  them  on,  took  up 
what  strength  she  had.  There  was  none  left  over. 
"What  things?"  she  asked;  and  her  hands,  lying  list- 
lessly on  her  lap,  were  flaccid  and  damp. 

Then  the  Baroness  poured  forth  an  endless  and 
bewildering  list  with  all  the  gusto  and  interest  of  health 
and  leisure.  When  her  English  gave  out  she  went  on 
in  German.     Her  list  ended  with  a  midwife. 

"Have  you  spoken  with  her?"  she  asked. 


212  THE  PASTORS  WIFE 

"No,"  said  Ingeborg.  "I  didn't  know — where  is 
she?" 

"In  our  village.  Frau  Dosch.  It  is  lucky  for  you 
she  is  not  further  away.  Sometimes  there  is  none  for 
miles.  She  is  a  very  good  sort  of  person.  A  little  old 
now,  but  at  least  she  has  been  very  good.  You  ought 
to  see  her  at  once  and  arrange." 

"Oh!"  said  Ingeborg,  who  felt  as  if  the  one  blessed- 
ness in  life  would  be  to  creep  away  somewhere  and 
never  arrange  anything  about  anything  for  ever. 

But  it  did  after  this  become  clear  to  her  that  certain 
preparations  would  undoubtedly  have  to  be  made,  and 
she  braced  herself  to  driving  into  Meuk  with  Use  and 
going  by  train  to  Konigsberg  for  a  day's  shopping. 

With  sandwiches  in  her  pocket  and  doubt  in  her 
heart  she  went  off  to  shop  for  the  first  time  in  German. 
Use,  full  of  importance,  and  dressed  astonishingly  in 
stockings  and  new  spring  garments,  sat  by  her  side 
with  an  eye  to  right  and  left  in  search  of  some  one  to 
witness  her  splendour.  Herr  Dremmel  had  laid  many 
and  strict  injunctions  on  her  to  take  care  of  her  mis- 
tress, and  in  between  these  wandering  glances  she  did 
her  best  by  loud  inquiries  as  to  Frau  Pastor's  sensa- 
tions. Frau  Pastor's  sensations  were  those  of  a  peril- 
ously jolted  woman.  She  held  tight  to  the  hand  rail 
on  one  side  while  the  Meuk  cobbles  lasted  and  to  Use's 
arm  on  the  other,  and  was  thankful  when  the  station 
was  reached  and  she  somehow,  with  a  shameful  clumsi- 
ness, got  down  out  of  the  high  carriage.  Incredible  to 
remember  that  last  time  she  had  been  at  that  station 
she  had  jumped  up  into  the  same  carriage  as  lightly  as 
a  bird.  She  felt  humiliated,  ashamed  of  her  awkward 
distorted  body.  She  drew  the  foolish  little  cloak  and 
scarf  she  had  put  on   anxiously   about  her.     People 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  213 

stared.  She  seemed  to  be  the  only  woman  going  to  have 
a  child;  all  the  others  were  free,  unhampered,  vigorous 
persons  like  Use.  It  was  as  though  she  had  suddenly 
grown  old,  this  slowness,  this  fear  of  not  being  able  to 
get  out  of  the  way  of  trucks  and  porters  in  time. 

In  Konigsberg  the  noise  in  the  streets  where  the  shops 
were  was  deafening.  All  the  drays  of  all  the  world 
seemed  to  be  spending  that  day  driving  furiously  over 
the  stones  and  tram-lines  filled  with  cases  of  empty  beer 
bottles  or  empty  milk  cans  or  long,  shivering,  scream- 
ing iron  laths,  while  endless  processions  of  electric- 
trams  rang  their  bells  at  them. 

Ingeborg  clung  to  Use's  arm  bewildered.  After 
Kbkensee  alone  in  its  fields,  after  the  dignified  tran- 
quillities of  Redchester,  the  noise  hammered  on  her 
head  like  showers  of  blows.  There  were  not  many 
people  about,  but  those  there  were  stared  to  the  extent 
of  stopping  dead  in  front  of  the  two  women  in  order 
not  to  miss  anything.  It  was  at  Ingeborg  they  stared. 
Use  was  a  familiar  figure,  just  a  sunburnt  country  girl 
with  oiled  hair,  in  her  Sunday  clothes;  but  Ingeborg 
was  a  foreigner,  an  astonishment.  Men  and  women 
stopped,  children  loitered,  half-grown  youths  whistled 
and  called  out  comments  that  her  slow  German  could 
not  follow.  She  flushed  and  turned  pale,  and  held  on 
tighter  to  Use.  She  supposed  she  must  be  looking  more 
grotesque  even  than  she  had  feared.  She  put  it  all  down 
to  her  condition,  not  knowing  on  this  her  first  walk 
in  a  German  provincial  town  thai  it  was  her  being  a 
stranger,  dressed  a  little  differently,  doing  her  hair 
a  little  differently,  that  caused  the  interest.  She 
walked  as  quickly  as  she  could  to  get  away  from  these 
people  into  a  shop,  little  beads  of  effort  round  her 
mouth,  looking  straight   before   her.  fighting   down   a 


214  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

dreadful  desire  to  cry;  and  it  was  with  thankfulness 
that  she  sank  on  to  a  chair  in  the  quiet  mid-day  empti- 
ness of  Berding  and  Kiihn's  drapery  and  linen  establish- 
ment. 

The  young  lady  behind  the  counter  stared,  too,  but 
then  there  was  only  one  of  her.  She  very  politely 
called  Ingeborg  gnadiges  Fraulein  and  inquired  whether 
her  child  was  a  boy  or  a  girl. 

"Lord  God!"  cried  Use,  "how  should  we  know?" 

But  Ingeborg,  with  dignity  and  decision,  said  it  was 
a  boy. 

"Then,"  said  the  young  lady,  "you  require  blue  rib- 
bons." 

"Do  I?"  said  Ingeborg,  very  willing  to  believe  her. 

The  young  lady  sorted  out  small  garments  from 
green  calico  boxes  labelled  For  Firsts.  There  were 
little  jackets,  little  shirts,  little  caps,  everything  one 
could  need  for  the  upper  portion  of  a  baby. 

"So,"  said  the  young  lady,  pushing  a  pile  of  these 
articles  across  the  counter  to  Ingeborg. 

"God,  God!"  cried  Use  in  an  ecstasy  at  such  tini- 
ness,  thrusting  her  red  thumb  through  one  of  the  di- 
minutive sleeves  and  holding  it  up  to  show  how  tightly 
it  fitted. 

"  Nicht  wahr?"  agreed  the  young  lady,  though  with- 
out excitement. 

"But,"  said  Ingeborg,  laboriously  searching  out 
her  words,  "the  baby  doesn't  leave  off  there,  at  its 
middle.  It'll  go  on.  It'll  be  a  whole  baby.  It'll  have 
legs  and  things.     What  does  one  put  on  the  rest  of  it?" 

The  young  lady  looked  at  Use  for  enlightenment. 

"It'll  have  a  rest,  Use,"  said  Ingeborg,  also  appealing 
to  her.      'These  things  are  just  clothes  for  cherubs." 

"  Ach  so,"  said  the  young  lady,  visited  by  a  glimmer 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  215 

of  understanding:  and  turning  round  she  dexterously 
whipped  down  more  green  boxes,  and  taking  off  the 
lids  brought  out  squares  of  different  materials,  linen, 
flannel,  and  a  soft  white  spongy  stuff. 

"Swaddle,"  she  said,  holding  them  up. 

"Swaddle?"  said  Ingeborg. 

"Swaddle,"  confirmed  Use. 

And  as  Ingeborg  only  stared,  the  young  lady  gradu- 
ally plumbing  her  ignorance  produced  a  small  mattress 
in  a  white  and  frilly  linen  bag,  and  diving  down  beneath 
the  counter,  brought  up  a  dusty  doll  which  she  deftly 
rolled  up  to  the  armpits  in  the  squares,  inserted  it  into 
the  bag  with  its  head  out,  and  tied  it  firmly  with  tapes. 
"So,"  she  said,  giving  this  neat  object  a  resounding 
slap:  and  picking  it  up  she  pretended  to  rock  it  fondly 
in  her  arms.     "Behold  the  First  Born,"  she  said. 

After  that  Ingeborg  put  herself  entirely  into  these 
experienced  hands.  She  bought  all  she  was  told  to. 
She  even  bought  the  doll  to  practise  on — "It  will  not 
do  everything  of  course,"  explained  the  young  lady. 
The  one  thing  she  would  not  buy  was  a  sewing  machine 
to  make  her  own  swaddle  with,  as  Use  economically 
counselled.  The  young  lady  was  against  this  purchase, 
which  could  only  be  made  in  another  shop;  she  said 
true  ladies  always  preferred  Berding  and  Kiihn  to  do 
such  work  for  them.  Use  said  true  mothers  always 
did  it  for  themselves,  and  it  was  one  of  the  chief  joys 
of  this  blessed  time,  Use  said,  seeing  the  house  grow 
fuller  and  fuller  of  swaddle. 

At  this  the  young  lady  pursed  her  lips  and  shrugged 
her  shoulders  and  assumed  an  air  of  waiting  indifference. 

Use,  resenting  her  attitude,  inquired  of  her  heatedly 
what,  then,  she  knew  of  Muttergliick. 

The  young  lady,  for  some  reason,  was  offended  at 


216  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

this,  though  nothing  was  more  certain  than  that  knowl- 
edge of  Muttergliick  would  have  meant  instant  dismissal 
from  Berding  and  Kiihn's.  It  became  a  wrangle  across 
the  counter,  and  was  only  ended  by  Ingeborg's  alto- 
gether siding  with  the  young  lady  and  the  interests  of 
Berding  and  Kiihn,  and  ordering,  as  the  Baroness  had 
directed,  ten  dozen  each  of  the  ready-made  squares. 
"I'd  die  if  I  had  to  hem  ten  dozen  of  anything,"  she 
explained  apologetically  to  Use. 

And  it  was  very  bitter  to  Use,  who  meant  well,  to 
see  the  young  lady  look  at  her  with  a  meditative  com- 
prehensiveness down  her  nose;  it  left  no  honourable 
course  open  to  her  but  to  sulk,  and  in  her  heart  she 
would  rather  not  have  sulked  on  this  exciting  and 
unusual  excursion.  She  was  forced  to,  however,  by 
her  own  public  opinion,  and  she  did  it  vigorously, 
thoroughly,  blackly,  all  the  rest  of  the  day,  all  the  way 
home;  and  neither  cakes  nor  chocolate  nor  ices  earnestly 
and  successively  applied  to  her  by  Ingeborg  at  the 
pastrycook's  were  allowed  to  lighten  the  gloom. 

"But  I  suppose,"  Ingeborg  said  to  herself  as  she 
crept  into  her  bed  that  night  in  the  spiritless  mood 
called  philosophical,  for  Use  was  her  stay  and  refuge, 
and  to  have  her  not  speaking  to  her,  to  feel  she  had 
hurt  her,  was  a  grievous  thing,  a  thing  when  one  is 
weary  very  like  the  last  straw — "I  suppose  it's  all 
really  only  a  part  of  B.  Oh,  oh,"  she  added  with  a 
sudden  flare  of  rebellion  that  died  out  immediately  in 
shame  of  it,  "I  don't  think  I  like  B — I  don't  think 
I  likeB.   ..." 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THERE  was  nevertheless  an  absorption  and  an 
excitement  about  this  new  strange  business 
that  did  not  for  a  moment  allow  her  to  be  dull. 
She  might  feel  ill,  wretched,  exhausted,  but  she  was 
always  interested.  A  tremendous  event  was  ahead  of 
her,  and  all  her  days  were  working  up  to  it.  She  lived 
in  preparation.  Each  one  of  her  sensations  was  a 
preparation,  an  advance.  There  was  a  necessity  for  it ; 
something  was  being  made,  was  growing,  had  to  be 
completed;  life  was  full  of  meaning,  and  of  plain  mean- 
ing; she  understood  and  saw  reasons  everywhere  for 
what  happened  to  her.  Things  had  to  be  so  if  one 
wanted  the  supreme  crown,  and  her  part  of  the  work 
was  really  very  easy,  it  was  just  to  be  patient.  She 
was  often  depressed,  but  only  because  the  month 
seemed  so  endless  and  she  was  so  tired  of  her  discomfort 
— never  because  she  was  afraid.  She  had  no  fears,  for 
she  had  no  experience.  She  contemplated  the  final 
part  of  the  adventure,  the  part  Use  alluded  to  cheer- 
fully as  her  Difficult  Hour,  with  the  perfect  tranquillity 
of  ignorance.  On  the  whole  she  was  very  free  from  the 
moods  Ilerr  Dremmel  had  braced  himself  to  bear,  and 
continued  right  through  not  to  be  exacting.  She  had 
no  examples  of  more  fussed  over  and  (ended  women 
before  her  eyes  to  upset  her  contentment,  and  saw  for 
herself  how  the  village  women  in  like  condition  worked 
on  at  their  wash-tubs  and  in  the  fields  up  to  the  end. 

217 


218  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

Besides,  she  had  been  trained  in  a  healthy  self-efface- 
ment. 

She  only  cried  once,  but  then  it  was  February  and 
enough  to  make  anybody  cry,  with  the  sleet  stinging 
the  windows  and  the  wind  howling  round  the  dark 
little  house.  She  put  it  down  to  February,  a  month 
she  had  never  thought  anything  of,  and  hid  from  herself 
as  she  hurriedly  wiped  away  her  tears — where  did  they 
all  come  from? — that  she  was  disgracefully  crying  be- 
cause she  had  been  alone  so  long,  and  Use  had  gone  out 
somewhere  without  asking,  and  Robert  hadn't  spoken 
to  her  for  days,  and  there  was  nobody  to  bring  in  the 
lamp  if  she  didn't  fetch  it  herself,  and  she  couldn't 
fetch  it  because  she  felt  so  funny  and  might  drop  it,  and 
what  she  wanted  most  in  the  world  was  a  mother.  Not 
a  mother  somewhere  else,  away  in  Redchester,  but  a 
real  soft  warm  mother  sitting  beside  her  in  that  room, 
with  her  (the  mother's)  arm  under  her  (Ingeborg's) 
head,  and  her  (Ingeborg's)  face  against  her  (the 
mother's)  bosom.  A  mother  with  feathers  all  over  her 
like  a  kind  hen  would  be  very  ideal,  but  short  of  that 
there  was  a  soft  black  dress  she  remembered  her  mother 
used  to  wear  with  amiable  old  lace  on  it  that  wouldn't 
scratch,  and  the  comfort  it  would  be,  the  comfort,  if  for 
half  an  hour  she  might  put  her  cheek  against  this  and 
keep  it  there  and  say  nothing. 

And  she  cried  more  and  more,  and  told  herself  more 
and  more  eagerly,  with  a  kind  of  rage,  that  February 
was  no  sort  of  month  at  all. 

When  Herr  Dremmel  came  out  of  his  laboratory  to 
ask  why  his  lamp  had  not  been  brought,  and  found 
no  light  anywhere  and  no  Use  when  he  shouted,  he 
was  vexed;  but  when  he  had  fetched  a  lamp  him- 
self and   put  it  on   the   table  where  it  shone  on  to 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  219 

Ingeborg's  swollen  and  blinking  eyes,  he  was  still  more 
vexed. 

'This   is   foolish,"   he   said,  staring  down  at  her  a 
moment.      'You  will  only  harm  my  child." 

She  did  not  cry  again. 

The  spring  had  dried  up  the  roads,  but  she  did  not  for 
all  that  take  walks  that  obliged  her  to  pass  through 
the  village;  instead,  she  spent  hours  in  the  budding 
garden  up  and  down  on  one  of  the  two  available  paths, 
the  one  at  the  end  on  the  edge  of  the  rye-fields  which 
were  now  the  vividest  green,  or  the  one  on  the  east  side 
of  the  house  beneath  Robert's  laboratory  windows 
where  the  lilacs  grew. 

His  table  was  at  right  angles  to  the  end  window, 
and  she  often  stood  on  the  path  watching  him,  his  head 
bent  over  his  work  in  an  absorption  that  went  on  hour 
after  hour.  He  kept  the  windows  shut  because  the 
spring  disturbed  him.  It  had  a  way  of  coming  in  ir- 
repressibly  and  wantoning  among  his  papers,  or  throw- 
ing a  handful  of  lilac  blossoms  into  his  rye  samples,  or 
sending  an  officious  bee  to  lumber  round  him. 

Ingeborg  walked  up  and  down,  up  and  down  on  this 
path  every  day,  taking  the  exercise  Baroness  Glambeck 
had  recommended,  and  for  three  weeks  just  this  path 
was  the  most  beautiful  thing  in  the  world,  for  it  was 
planted  on  either  side  with  ancient  lilac  bushes  and  I  hex- 
were  a  revelation  to  1km-  when  they  came  out  after  the 
spare  and  frugal  lilacs  in  the  gardens  ;il  home.  Above 
their  swaying  scented  loveliness  of  light  and  colour  and 
shape  she  could  see  Robert's  tow-eoloured  head  inside 
the  window  bending  over  his  table  every  time  she  came 
to  the  end  of  her  tramp  and  turned  round  again.  It 
was  the  best  part  of  the  whole  nine  months,  these  three 
weeks  of  lilacs  and  line  weather  on  that  scented  path, 


220  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

with  Robert  busy  and  content  where  she  could  see  him. 
She  loved  being  able  to  see  him ;  it  was  a  companionable 
thing. 

By  June  everything  was  ready.  The  nursery  was 
furnished,  the  cradle  trimmed,  a  pale  blue  perambulator 
blocked  the  passage,  neat  stacks  of  little  clothes  filled 
the  cupboards,  and  Frau  Dosch,  a  hoary  person  of 
unseemly  conversation,  interviewed  and  told  to  be  on 
the  alert.  The  idea  of  arranging  for  a  doctor  to  be  on 
the  alert  too  would  not  of  itself  have  entered  Ingeborg's 
head,  and  nobody  put  it  there.  Such  a  being  was  indeed 
mentioned  once  by  Baroness  Glambeck,  whose  interest, 
increasing  with  the  months,  brought  her  over  several 
times,  but  only  vaguely  as  some  one  who  had  to  be  sent 
for  when  the  midwife  judged  the  patient  to  have  reached 
the  stage.  Then,  apparently,  the  law  obliged  the  mid- 
wife to  send  for  a  doctor. 

"  There  is  much  difference,  however,"  said  the 
Baroness,  "  between  thinking  one  is  in  extremity  and 
really  being  in  it,"  and  the  patient  was  apt  to  be  biassed 
on  these  occasions,  she  explained,  and  inclined  rashly 
to  jump  to  conclusions.  Therefore  wisdom  dictated 
the  leaving  of  such  a  decision  to  the  midwife. 

"Yes,"  said  Ingeborg  placidly. 

"Of  course,"  said  the  Baroness,  "all  this  is  different 
from  other  illnesses,  because  it  is  not  one." 

"Yes,"  said  Ingeborg,  placidly. 

"And  when  I  speak  of  the  patient  I  do  not  mean 
the  patient,  because  without  an  illness  there  cannot  be 
a  patient." 

"No,"  said  Ingeborg,  placidly. 

"Nor  without  a  patient  can  there  be  an  illness." 

"No,"  said  Ingeborg,  placidly. 

She  was  leaning  back  in  a  low  chair  watching  the 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  221 

sun  shining  on  the  tops  of  the  lime-trees  over  her  head, 
for  it  was  the  end  of  June  and  they  were  in  the  garden. 
It  all  seemed  very  satisfactory.  Nobody  was  ill,  nobody 
was  going  to  be  ill.  There  would  be  rather  a  trouble- 
some moment  that  would  be  met  and  got  over  with 
patience  and  Frau  Dosch,  but  no  illness,  just  nature 
having  its  way,  and  then — it  really  seemed  altogether 
too  wonderful  that  then,  quite  soon  now,  perhaps  in  a 
week  or  two,  any  day  really,  there  would  be  a  baby. 
And  she  was  going  to  love  it  with  this  passion  of  love 
that  only  mothers  know,  and  it  was  going  to  fill  her 
life  most  beautifully  to  the  brim,  and  it  would  make 
her  so  happy  that  she  would  never  want  anything  but 
just  it. 

That  is  what  thev  had  told  her.  On  her  own  account 
she  had  added  to  this  that  the  baby  would  be  every 
bit  as  clever  as  Robert  but  with  more  leisure;  that  it 
would  have  his  brains  but  not  his  laboratory;  that  it 
wouldn't  be  able,  it  wouldn't  want,  to  get  out  of  its 
perambulator  and  go  and  lock  itself  up  away  from  her 
and  weigh  rye  grains;  and  that  it  wouldn't  mind,  in 
fact  it  would  prefer,  being  fetched  out  of  its  thoughts 
to  come  and  be  kissed. 

For  ages,  for  years,  it  was  going  to  be  her  dear  and 
close  companion,  her  fellow-paddler  in  the  lake,  her 
fellow-wanderer  in  God's  woods.  Her  eyes  were  soft 
with  joy  at  the  thought  of  how  soon  now  she  was  going 
to  be  able  to  tuck  this  precious  being  under  her  arm 
and  take  it  with  her  lightly  and  easily  into  the  garden, 
restored  to  her  own  slim  nimbleness  again,  and  point 
out  the  exceeding  beauty  of  the  world  to  its  new,  as- 
tonished eyes.  She  would  show  it  the  rye-fields,  and  the 
great  heaped-up  sky.  She  would  make  it  acquainted 
with  the  frogs,  and  introduce  it  to  the  bittern.     She 


222  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

would  draw  its  attention  to  the  delight  of  lying  face 
downwards  on  hot  grass  where  tufts  of  thyme  grew 
and  watching  the  busy  life  among  the  blades  and  roots. 
She  would  insist  on  its  observing  the  storks  standing 
in  their  nest  on  the  stable  roof  and  how  the  light  lay 
along  their  white  wings,  and  how  the  red  of  their  legs 
was  like  the  red  of  the  pollard  willows  in  March.  And 
at  night,  if  it  were  so  ill-advised  as  not  to  sleep,  she 
would  pick  it  up  and  take  it  to  the  window  and  impress 
its  soft  mind  all  over  with  shining  little  stars.  Wonder- 
ful to  think  that  before  the  orange-coloured  lupins, 
those  August  glories,  had  done  flowering,  she  would  be 
out  among  them  again,  only  with  her  son  this  time,  her 
flesh  of  her  flesh  and  blood  of  her  blood,  her  Robertlet. 
Baroness  Glambeck  watched  her  face  curiously  as 
she  lay  looking  up  at  the  sunny  tree-tops  with  the 
amused  smile  of  these  thoughts  on  it.  It  was  clear  the 
Frau  Pastor  had  forgotten  her  presence;  and  even  her 
being  so  near  her  Difficult  Hour  did  not  explain  or  excuse 
a  social  lapse.  Indeed,  the  Frau  Pastor  received  her 
visits  with  an  absence  of  excitement  and  of  realisation 
of  the  honour  being  done  her  that  was  almost  beyond 
the  limits  of  the  forgivable.  Always  she  behaved  as 
though  she  were  an  equal,  and  a  particularly  equal 
equal.  Much,  however,  could  be  excused  in  a  person 
who  was  not  only  English — a  nation  the  Baroness  had 
heard  described  as  rude — but  so  near  her  first  confine- 
ment. When  this  was  over  there  would  be  a  severe 
readjustment  of  relationships,  but  meanwhile  one  could 
not  really  be  angry  with  her;  just  her  amazing  and 
terrible  ignorance  of  the  simplest  facts  connected  with 
child-bearing  made  it  impossible  to  be  angry  with  her. 
She  reminded  the  Baroness  of  a  sheep  going  tranquilly 
to  the  slaughter,  quite  pleased  with  the  promenade, 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  223 

quite  without  a  thought  of  what  lay  at  the  end  of  it. 
Did  English  mothers  then  all  keep  their  daughters  in 
such  darkness  on  the  one  great  subject  for  a  woman? 

For  some  subtle  reason  the  expression  of  extreme 
placidness  on  Ingeborg's  face  as  she  lay  silently  watch- 
ing the  tree-tops  and  planning  what  she  would  do  with 
her  baby  annoyed  the  Baroness. 

"It  will  hurt,  you  know,"  she  said. 

Ingeborg  brought  her  gaze  slowly  down  to  earth 
again,  and  looked  at  her  a  moment. 

"What?"  she  said. 

"It  will  hurt,"  repeated  the  Baroness. 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  Ingeborg.  "I  know.  But  it's  all 
natural." 

"Certainly  it  is  natural.     Nevertheless " 

The  Baroness  stopped  grimly,  screwed  up  her  mouth, 
and  shook  her  head  three  times/with  an  awful  suggestive- 
ness. 

Ingeborg  looked  at  her,  and  then  suddenly  some 
words  out  of  her  cathedral-going  days  at  Redchester 
flashed  into  her  mind.  She  had  totally  forgotten  them, 
and  now  her  memory  began  jerking  them  together. 
They  came,  she  knew,  in  the  Prayer-book  somewhere; 
was  it  in  the  Litany?  No;  but  anyhow  they  were  in 
that  truthful  book,  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  and 
they  were — yes,  that  was  it:  The  great  danger  of  child- 
birth. Yes;  and  again:  The  great  pain  and  peril  of 
child-birth. 

A  quick  flush  came  into  her  face,  and  for  the  first 
time  a  look  of  fear  into  her  eyes.  She  sat  up,  leaning 
on  both  her  hands,  and  stared  at  I  lie  Baroness. 

"Is  it  so  very  dreadful?"  she  asked. 

The  Baroness  merely  shook  her  head. 

'It    can't    be    very,"'    said    Ingeborg,    watching    the 


224  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

Baroness's  expression  in  search  of  agreement,  "or  there 
wouldn't  be  any  mothers  left." 

The  Baroness  went  on  screwing  up  her  mouth  and 
shaking  her  head. 

"It  must  be  bearable,"  said  Ingeborg  again,  anxiously. 

The  Baroness  would  not  commit  herself. 

"They'd  die,  you  see,  if  it  wasn't — the  mothers  all 
would.  But  there  seem" — her  voice  trembled  a  little 
in  her  desire  for  the  Baroness's  agreement — "there 
seem  to  be  lots  of  mothers  still  about." 

She  paused,  but  the  Baroness  continued  not  to  com- 
mit herself. 

"I  can  bear  anything,"  said  Ingeborg,  with  a  great 
show  of  pride  and  a  voice  that  trembled,  "if  it's — if  it's 
reasonable." 

"It  is  not  reasonable,"  said  the  Baroness.  "It  is 
the  Will  of  God." 

"Oh,  that's  the  same  thing,  the  same  thing,"  said 
Ingeborg,  throwing  herself  back  on  her  cushions  and 
nervously  pulling  some  white  pinks  she  had  been  smell- 
ing to  pieces. 

She  was  ashamed  of  her  terror.  But  all  that  evening 
she  was  restless  and  nervous,  struggling  with  this  new 
feeling  of  fear.  She  could  not  keep  still,  but  walked 
about  the  sitting-room  while  Robert  ate  his  supper  at 
the  table,  pressing  her  cold  hands  together,  trying  to 
reason  herself  into  tranquillity  again. 

She  stood  still  a  moment  watching  Robert's  quiet 
black  back  as  he  bent  over  his  supper.  Then  she  went 
over  to  him  impulsively  and  rubbed  both  her  hands 
quickly  through  his  hair,  which  had  not  been  cut  for 
some  time,  making  it  stand  up  on  ends. 

"There!"  she  said.  "Now  you  look  really  sweet." 
And  she  bent  and  kissed  him,  lingeringly,  on  the  back 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  225 

of  his  neck.  He  was  near  her,  he  was  alive,  she  could  hold 
on  to  him  for  a  little  before  she  went  alone  into  whatever 
it  was  of  icy  and  awful  and  unknown  that  waited  for  her. 

"Good  little  wife,"  he  said,  still  going  on  eating,  but 
putting  his  left  arm  round  her  while  his  right  continued 
to  do  what  was  necessary  with  the  supper,  and  not  look- 
ing up. 

His  affection  at  this  time  had  watered  down  into  a 
mild  theory.  She  was  not  a  wife  to  him,  though  he 
called  her  so;  she  was  a  werdende  Mutter.  This,  Herr 
Dremmel  told  himself  when  he,  too,  felt  bored  by  the 
length  of  the  months,  is  a  most  honourable,  creditable, 
and  respectable  condition;  but  no  man  can  feel  warm 
towards  a  condition.  His  little  sheep  had  disap- 
peared into  the  immensities  of  the  werdende  Mutter. 
He  would  be  glad  when  she  was  restored  to  him. 

The  next  day  she  got  a  letter  from  Mrs.  Bullivant, 
dated  from  the  Master's  House,  Ananias  College,  Ox- 
ford. 

"It  may  interest  you  to  hear,''  wrote  Mrs.  Bulli- 
vant, "that  your  sister  has  a  little  daughter.  The  child 
iras  born  at  daybreak  this  morning.  I  am  worn  out 
irith  watching.  It  is  a  very  fine  little  girl,  and  both  mother 
and  child  are  doing  well.  I  am  not  doing  well  at  all.  We 
had  that  excellent  Dr.  Williamson,  I  am  thankful  to  say, 
or  I  don't  know  what  would  hare  happened.  Of  course 
our  darling  Judith  was  mercifully  spared  knowing  any- 
thing about  it,  for  she  icas  kept  well  under  chloroform,  but 
I  knew  and  I  feel  very  upset.  I  only  wish  /,  too,  could 
hare  been  chloroformed  during  those  anxious  hours.  As 
it  is  I  am  suffering  much  from  shock,  and  it  will  be  a  long 
while  before  I  recover.  Dr.  Williamson  says  that  on  tlicse 
occasions  he  always  pities  most  the  mothers  of  the  mothers. 
Your  father " 


226  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

But  here  Ingeborg  let  the  letter  drop  to  the  floor 
and  sat  thinking. 

When  Robert  came  in  to  dinner  late  that  day,  hot 
and  pleased  from  his  fields  which  were  doing  particularly 
well  after  the  warm  rains  of  several  admirably  timed 
thunderstorms,  she  gave  him  his  food  and  waited  till  he 
had  eaten  it  and  begun  to  smoke,  and  then  asked  him 
if  she  were  going  to  have  chloroform. 

''Chloroform?"  he  repeated,  gazing  at  her  while 
he  fetched  back  his  thoughts  from  their  pleasurable 
lingering  among  his  fields.     "What  for? " 

"So  that  I  don't  know  about  anything.  Mother 
writes  Judith  had  some.     She's  got  a  little  girl." 

Herr  Dremmel  took  his  cigar  out  of  his  mouth  and 
stared  at  her.  She  was  leaning  both  elbows  on  the 
table  at  her  end  and,  with  her  chin  on  her  hands,  was 
looking  at  him  with  very  bright  eyes. 

"But  this  is  cowardice,"  he  said. 

"I'd  like  some  chloroform,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"It  is  against  nature,"  said  Herr  Dremmel. 

"I'd  like  some  chloroform,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"You  have  before  you,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  en- 
deavouring to  be  patient,  "an  entirely  natural  process, 
as  natural  as  going  to  sleep  at  night  and  waking  up 
next  morning." 

"It  may  be  as  natural,"  said  Ingeborg,  "but  I  don't 
believe  it's  as  nice.     I'd  like  some  chloroform." 

'What!  Not  nice?  When  it  is  going  to  introduce 
you  to  the  supreme " 

'  Yes,  I  know.  But  I — I  have  a  feeling  it's  going  to  in- 
troduce me  rather  roughly.     I'd  like  some  chloroform." 

"God,"  said  Herr  Dremmel  solemnly,  "has  arranged 
these  introductions  Himself,  and  it  is  not  for  us  to  criti- 
cise. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  227 

"That's  the  first  time,"  said  Ingeborg,  "that  you've 
talked  like  a  bishop.     You  might  be  a  bishop." 

"When  it  comes  to  the  highest  things,"  said  Herr 
Dremmel  severely,  "and  this  is  the  holiest,  most  ex- 
alted act  a  human  being  can  perpetrate,  all  men  are 
equally  believers." 

"I  expect  they  are,"  said  Ingeborg.  "But  the  others 
— the  ones  who're  not  men — they'd  like  some  chloro- 
form." 

"No  healthy,  normally  built  woman  needs  it,"  said 
Herr  Dremmel,  greatly  irritated  by  this  persistence. 
"No  doctor  would  give  it.  Besides,  there  will  not  be 
a  doctor,  and  the  midwife  may  not  administer  it.  Why, 
I  do  not  recognise  my  little  wife,  my  little  intelligent 
wife  who  must  know  that  nothing  is  being  required  of 
her  but  that  which  is  done  by  other  women  every  day." 

"I  don't  see  what  being  intelligent  has  to  do  with 
this,"  said  Ingeborg,  "and  I'd  like  some  chloroform." 

Herr  Dremmel  looked  at  her  bright  eyes  and  flushed 
clucks  in  astonishment.  Up  to  now  she  had  rejoiced 
in  her  condition  whenever  he  mentioned  it,  and  indeed 
he  could  see  no  reason  for  any  other  attitude;  she  had 
apparently  felt  very  little  that  was  not  pleasant  during 
the  whole  time,  known  none  of  those  distresses  he  had 
heard  that  women  sometimes  endure,  been  healthily 
free  from  complications.  There  had  been  moods,  it  is 
true,  and  he  had  occasionally  found  her  lounging  on 
solas,  but  then  women  easily  become  lazy  at  these  times. 
It  had  all  been  normal  and  would  no  doubt  continue 
normal.  What,  then,  was  this  shrinking  at  the  eleventh 
hour,  this  inability  to  be  as  ordinarily  courageous  as 
every  peasant  woman  in  the  place?  It  was  a  most  un- 
fortunate, unpleasant  whim,  the  most  unfortunate  she 
could   have  had.     lie   had   been  prepared  for  whims, 


228  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

but  had  always  supposed  they  would  be  tinned  pine 
apples.  Of  course  he  was  not  going  to  humour  her. 
Too  much  was  at  stake.  He  had  heard  anaesthetics 
were  harmful  on  these  occasions,  harmful  and  entirely 
unnecessary.  The  best  thing  by  far  for  the  child  was 
the  absence  of  everything  except  nature.  Nature  in 
this  matter  should  be  given  a  free  hand.  She  was 
not  always  wise,  he  knew  from  his  experience  with  his 
fields,  but  in  this  department  he  was  informed  she 
should  be  left  completely  to  herself.  If  his  wife  was 
so  soft  as  not  to  be  able  to  bear  a  little  pain  what  sort 
of  sons  was  she  likely  to  give  him?  A  breed  of  shrinkers; 
a  breed  of  white-skinned  hiders.  Why,  he  had  not 
asked  for  gas  even  when  he  had  three  teeth  out  at  one 
sitting  two  years  before — it  was  the  dentist  who  had 
insisted  he  should  have  it — and  that  was  only  teeth, 
objects  of  no  value  afterwards.  But  to  have  one's  son 
handicapped  at  the  very  beginning  because  his  mother 
was   not  unselfish   enough   to   endure  a  little  for  his 

Sct-KC       •       •       • 

Ingeborg  got  up  and  came  and  put  her  arms  round 
his  neck  and  whispered.  "I'm — frightened,"  she 
breathed.     "Robert,  I'm — frightened." 

Then  he  took  her  to  the  sofa,  and  made  her  sit  down 
beside  him  while  he  reasoned  with  her. 

He  reasoned  for  at  least  twenty  minutes,  taking  great 
pains  and  being  patient.  He  told  her  she  was  not 
really  frightened,  but  that  her  physical  condition  caused 
her  to  fancy  she  thought  she  was. 

Ingeborg  was  interested  by  this,  and  readily  admitted 
that  it  was  possible. 

He  told  her  about  the  simple  courage  of  the  other 
women  in  Kokensee,  and  Ingeborg  agreed,  for  she  had 
seen  it  herself. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  229 

He  told  her  how  God  had  arranged  she  should  bring 
forth  in  sorrow,  but  she  fidgeted  and  began  again  to 
talk  of  bishops. 

He  told  her  it  would  only  be  a  few  hours'  suffering, 
perhaps  less,  and  that  in  return  there  was  a  lifetime's 
joy  for  them  in  their  child. 

She  listened  attentively  to  this,  was  quite  quiet  for 
a  few  minutes,  then  slid  her  hand  into  his. 

He  told  her  she  might,  by  letting  herself  go  to  fear, 
hurt  her  child,  and  would  she  not  in  that  case  find 
difficulty  afterwards  in  forgiving  herself? 

This  completed  her  cure.  An  enormous  courage 
took  the  place  of  her  misgivings.  She  rose  up  from  the 
sofa  so  superfluously  brave,  so  glowing  with  enterprise, 
that  she  wanted  to  begin  at  once  that  she  might  show 
how  much  she  could  cheerfully  endure.  "As  though," 
she  said,  lifting  her  chin,  "I  couldn't  stand  what  other 
women  stand — as  though  I  wouldn't  stand  anything 
sooner  than  hurt  my  baby!"  And  she  flung  back  her 
head  in  the  proudest  defiance  of  whatever  might  be 
ahead  of  her. 

Her  baby,  her  husband,  her  happy  home — to  suffer 
for  these  would  be  beautiful  if  it  were  not  such  a  little 
thing,  almost  too  little  to  offer  up  at  their  dear  altar. 
She  would  have  been  transfigured  by  her  shining  thoughts 
if  anything  could  have  transfigured  her,  but  no  thoughts 
however  bright  could  pierce  through  that  sad  body. 
Her  outlines  were  not  the  outlines  for  heroic  attitudes. 
She  not  only  had  adouble  chin,  she  seemed  to  be  doubled 
all  over.  She  looked  the  queerest  figure,  heavy,  mid- 
dle-aged, uncouth,  ugly,  standing  there  passionately 
expressing  her  readiness  to  begin;  and  Herr  Dremmel 
unconsciously  seeing  this,  and  bored  by  having  had 
to   explain    the  obvious  at    such    length   and  spend  a 


230  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

valuable  half  hour  bringing  a  woman  to  reason — 
why  could  they  never  go  to  it  by  themselves? — wasted 
no  more  words  having  got  her  there,  but  brushed  a 
hasty  kiss  across  her  hair  and  went  away  looking  at 
his  watch. 

And  next  day,  just  as  she  was  putting  the  potatoes 
into  that  dinner-pot  that  so  much  simplified  her  cook- 
ing, she  uttered  a  small  exclamation  and  turned  quickly 
to  Use  with  a  look  of  startled  questioning. 

"Gehfs  los?"  asked  Use,  pausing  in  the  wiping  dry 
of  a  wooden  ladle. 

"I — don't  know,"  said  Ingeborg,  gasping  a  little. 
"No,"  she  added  after  a  minute,  during  which  they 
stood  staring  at  each  other,  "it  wasn't  anything." 

And  she  went  on  with  the  potatoes. 

But  when  presently  there  was  another  little  flutter- 
ing exclamation,  Use,  with  great  decision,  laid  down 
her  gloomy  drying-cloth  and  sought  out  Johann,  Herr 
Dremmel  not  having  come  in,  and  bade  him  harness 
the  horses  and  fetch  Frau  Dosch. 

"The  first  thing,"  said  Frau  Dosch,  arriving  two 
hours  later,  surprisingly  brisk  and  business-like  con- 
sidering her  age  and  the  heat,  "the  jfirst  thing  is  to 
plait  your  hair  in  two  plaits." 

And  still  later,  when  Ingeborg  had  left  off  pretending 
or  trying  to  be  anything  at  all,  when  courage  and  unsel- 
fishness and  stoicism  and  a  desire  to  please  Robert 
— who  was  Robert? — were  like  toys  for  drawing-room 
games,  shoved  aside  in  these  grips  with  death,  Frau 
Dosch  nodded  her  head  philosophically  while  she  ate 
and  drank  from  the  trays  Use  kept  on  bringing  her, 
and  said  at  regular  intervals,  "  J  a,  ja — was  sein  muss 
sein  mass." 

Such  were  the  consolations  of  Frau  Dosch. 


CHAPTER  XX 

THESE  things  began  on  Tuesday  at  midday;  and 
on  Wednesday  night,  so  late  that  bats  and 
moths  were  busy  in  the  garden  and  often  in  the 
room,  Frau  Dosch,  grown  very  wispy  about  the  hair 
and  abandoned  in  the  dress,  dabbed  a  bundle  of  swaddle 
with  a  small  red  face  emerging  from  it  down  on  to  the 
bed  beside  Ingeborg  and  said,  tired  but  triumphant, 
"There!" 

The  great  moment  had  come:  the  supreme  moment 
of  a  woman's  life.  Herr  Dremmel  was  present,  di- 
shevelled and  moist-eyed;  Use  was  present,  glowing  and 
hot.  It  was  a  boy,  a  magnificent  boy,  Frau  Dosch 
pronounced,  and  the  three  stood  watching  for  the  first 
ray  of  Muttcrgliiek,  the  first  illumination  that  was  to 
light  the  face  on  the  pillow. 

'There! "  said  Frau  Dosch;  but  Ingeborg  did  not  open 
her  eyes. 

'There!"  said  Frau  Dosch  again,  picking  up  the 
bundle  and  laying  it  slantwise  on  Ingeborg's  breast 
and  addressing  her  very  loudly.  "  Frau  Pastor — rouse 
yourself — behold  your  son — a  splendid  boy — almost  a 
man  already." 

She  took  Ingeborg's  arm  and  laid  it  round  the  bundle. 

It  slid  off  and  hung  over  the  edge  of  the  bed  as  before. 

"Tut,  tut!"  said  Frau  Dosch,  becoming  scandalised; 
and  stooping  down  she  shouted  into  Ingeborg's  car: 
"Frau  Pastor — wake  up — look  at  your  son — a  magnifi- 

2S1 


232  THE  PASTORS  WIFE 

cent  fellow — with  a  chest,  I  tell  you — oh,  but  he  will 
break  the  hearts  of  the  maidens  he  will " 

Still  the  blankest  indifference  on  the  face  on  the 
pillow. 

Herr  Dremmel  knelt  down  so  as  to  be  on  a  level 
with  it,  and  took  the  limp  damp  hand  hanging  down  in 
his  and  patted  it. 

"Little  wife,"  he  said  in  German,  "it  is  all  over. 
Open  your  eyes  and  rejoice  with  me  in  our  new  happi- 
ness.    You  have  given  me  a  son." 

"  Ja  eben,"  said  Frau  Dosch  emphatically. 

"You  have  filled  my  cup  with  joy.", 

"Ja  ehen"  said  Frau  Dosch,  still  louder. 

"Open  your  eyes,  and  welcome  him  to  his  mother's 
heart." 

" J  a  eben,''''  said  Frau  Dosch  indignantly. 

Then  Ingeborg  did  slowly  open  her  eyes — it  seemed 
as  if  she  could  hardly  lift  their  heavy  lids — and  looked 
at  Robert  as  though  she  were  looking  at  him  from  an 
immense  distance.  Her  mouth  remained  open;  her  face 
was  vacant. 

Frau  Dosch  seized  the  bundle,  and  with  clucking 
sounds  jerked  it  up  and  down  between  the  faces  of  the 
parents  so  that  its  mother's  eyes  must  needs  fall  upon 
it.     Its  red  contents  began  to  cry. 

"Ah — there  now — now  we  shall  see,"  exclaimed 
Frau  Dosch,  who  had  been  secretly  perturbed  by  the 
newborn's  absence  of  comment  while  it  was  being 
washed  and  swaddled. 

'The  first  cry  of  our  son,"  said  Herr  Dremmel, 
kissing  Ingeborg's  hand  with  deep  emotion. 

"Now  we  will  try,"  said  Frau  Dosch,  once  more 
laying  the  baby  on  Ingeborg's  chest  and  folding  her 
arm  round  it.     This  time  she  took  the  precaution  to 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  233 

hold  the  mother's  arm  firmly  in  position  herself.  "Oh, 
the  splendid  fellow!"  she  exclaimed.  "Frau  Pastor, 
what  do  you  say  to  your  eldest  son?" 

But  Frau  Pastor  said  nothing.  Her  eyelids  drooped 
over  her  eyes  again,  and  shut  the  world  and  all  its 
vigours  out.  The  sound  of  these  people  round  her 
bed  came  to  her  from  far  away.  There  was  a  singing 
in  her  ears,  a  black  remoteness  in  her  soul.  Somewhere 
from  behind  the  vast  sea  of  nothingness  in  which  she 
seemed  to  sink,  through  the  constant  singing  in  her 
ears,  came  little  faint  voices  with  words.  She  wanted 
to  listen,  she  wanted  to  listen,  why  would  these  people 
interrupt  her — the  same  words  over  and  over  again, 
faintly  throbbing  in  a  rhythm  like  the  rhythm  of  the 
wheels  of  the  train  that  had  brought  her  through  the 
night  long  ago  across  Europe  to  her  German  home, 
only  very  distant,  tiny,  muffled—  "From  battle  and 
murder" — yes,  she  had  caught  that — "from  all  women 
labouring  with  child" — yes — "from  all  sick  persons" — 
yes — "and  young  children" — yes,  go  on — "Good  Lord 
deliver  us" — oh,  yes — please.  .  .  .  Good  Lord  de- 
liver us — please — please — deliver  us. 

k*  Perhaps  a  little  brandy?"  suggested  Herr  Dremmel, 
puzzled. 

"Brandy!     If   her   own   son   cannot   cheer  her 

Does  the  Herr  Pastor  then  not  know  that  one  gives 
nothing  at  first  to  a  lady  lying-in  but  water-soup?" 

Herr  Dremmel,  feeling  ignorant,  let  go  the  idea  of 
brandy.  ''Her  hand  is  rather  cold,"  he  said,  almost 
apologetically,  for  who  knew  but  what  it  was  cold 
because  it  ought  to  be? 

Frau  Dosch  expressed  the  opinion  that  it  was  not, 
and  that  if  it  were  it  was  not  so  cold  as  her  heart. 
"See  here,"  she  said,  "see  this  beautiful  boy  addressing 


234  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

his  mother  in  the  only  language  he  knows,  and  she  not 
even  looking  at  him.  Come,  my  little  fellow — come, 
then — we  are  not  wanted — come  with  Aunt  Dosch — 
the  old  Aunt  Dosch " 

And  she  took  the  baby  off  Ingeborg's  passive  chest, 
and  after  a  few  turns  with  it  up  and  down  the  room 
slapping  the  underside  of  its  swaddle  in  a  way  ex- 
perience had  taught  choked  out  crying,  put  it  in  the 
pale  blue  cradle  that  stood  ready  on  two  chairs. 

"Well,  well,"  said  Herr  Dremmel  getting  up,  for 
his  knees  were  hurting  him,  and  looking  at  his  watch, 
"it  is  bedtime  for  all  of  us.  It  is  past  midnight. 
To-morrow,  after  a  sleep,  my  wife  will  be  herself 
again." 

He  went  towards  the  door,  followed  by  Use  with 
one  of  the  two  lamps  that  were  adding  to  the  stifling 
heat  in  the  room,  then  paused  and  looked  back. 

Ingeborg  was  lying  as  before. 

"You  are  sure  only  water-soup?"  he  said,  hesitating. 
"Is  that — will  that  by  the  time  it  reaches  my  son 
nourish  him?" 

For  all  answer  Frau  Dosch  advanced  heavily  and 
shut  the  door. 

She  was  tired  to  death.  She  was  not,  at  that  hour 
of  the  night,  going  to  defend  her  methods  to  a  husband. 
She  locked  the  door  and  began  pulling  off  her  dress. 
She  could  hardly  stand.  It  had  been  one  of  those 
perfectly  normal  births  that  yet  are  endless  and  half 
kill  an  honest  midwife  who  is  not  as  young  as  she  used 
to  be.  Before  dropping  on  to  the  bed  provided  for  her 
she  took  a  final  look  at  the  object  in  the  cradle,  which 
was  noiselessly  sleeping,  and  then  at  the  other  object 
on  the  bed,  which  was  lying  as  before.  Well,  if  the 
Frau  Pastor  preferred  behaving  like  a  log  instead  of  a 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  235 

proud  mother — Frau  Dosch  shrugged  her  shoulder,  put 
on  a  coloured  dimity  jacket  over  her  petticoat,  kicked 
off  her  slippers,  and  went,  stockinged  and  hairpinned, 
to  bed  and  to  instant  sleep. 

But  the  life  in  the  parsonage  puzzled  Herr  Dremmel 
during  the  next  few  weeks.  He  had  expected  the 
simple  joys  of  realised  family  happiness  to  succeed  the 
act  of  birth.  It  was  a  reasonable  expectation.  It 
occurred  in  other  houses.  He  had  been  patient  for 
nine  months,  supported  during  their  interminableness 
by  the  thought  that  what  he  bore  would  be  amply  made 
up  to  him  at  the  end  of  them  by  a  delighted  young  wife 
restored  to  him  in  her  slenderness  and  health,  running 
singing  about  the  house  with  a  healthy  son  in  her  arms. 
The  son  was  there  and  seemed  satisfactory,  but  where 
was  the  healthy  young  wife?  And  as  for  running  about 
the  house,  when  the  fifth  day  came,  the  day  on  which 
the  other  women  in  the  parish  got  up  and  began  to 
be  brisk  again,  Ingeborg  made  no  sign  of  even  being 
aware  it  was  expected  of  her.  She  looked  at  him 
vaguely  when  he  suggested  it,  with  the  same  vagueness 
and  want  of  interest  in  anything  with  which  she  lay  for 
hours  staring  out  of  the  window,  her  mouth  always  a 
little  open,  her  position  always  the  same,  unless  Use 
came  and  changed  it  for  her. 

Frau  Dosch  had  left  the  morning  after  the  birth 
according  to  the  custom  of  midwives,  returning  on  each 
of  the  three  following  mornings  to  wash  the  mother 
and  child,  and  after  that  Use  had  taken  over  these 
duties,  and  as  far  as  he  could  see  performed  them  with 
zeal  and  vigour.  Everything  was  done  that  could  be 
done;  why  then  did  Ingeborg  remain  apathetic  and 
uninterested  in  bed,  and  not  lake  the  trouble  even  to 
shut  her  mouth? 


236  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

He  was  puzzled  and  disappointed.  The  days  passed, 
and  nothing  was  changed.  He  could  not  but  view 
these  manifestations  of  want  of  backbone  with  un- 
easiness, occurring  as  they  did  in  the  mother  of  his 
children.  The  least  thing  that  was  demanded  of  her 
in  the  way  of  exertion  made  her  break  out  into  a 
perspiration.  She  had  not  yet,  so  far  as  he  knew,  vol- 
untarily put  her  arms  once  round  her  son  —  Use  had 
to  hold  them  round  him.  She  had  not  even  said  any- 
thing about  him.  He  might  have  been  a  girl  for  any 
pride  she  showed.  And  that  holiest  function  of  a 
mother,  the  nursing  of  her  child,  instead  of  being  a 
recurring  joy  was  a  recurring  and  apparently  increasing 
difficulty. 

He  had  pointed  out  to  her  that  it  was  not  only  the 
greatest  privilege  of  a  mother  to  nurse  her  child  but  it 
was  an  established  fact  that  it  gave  her  the  deepest, 
the  holiest  satisfaction.  In  all  pictures  where  there  is 
a  mother,  he  had  reminded  her,  she  is  invariably  either 
nursing  or  has  just  been  doing  so,  and  on  her  face  is  the 
satisfied  serenity  that  attends  the  fulfilment  of  natural 
functions. 

She  had  not  answered,  and  her  face  remained  turned 
away  and  flushed,  with  beads  rolling  down  it.  Use 
held  the  baby,  he  observed;  there  was  a  most  regret- 
table want  of  hold  in  his  wife. 

And  she  appeared  to  have  odd  fancies.  She  imagined, 
for  instance,  that  the  pieces  of  buttered  bread  Use  put 
on  a  plate  and  laid  beside  her  on  her  bed  at  tea-time 
were  stuck  to  the  plate.  He  had  found  her  struggling 
one  afternoon  and  becoming  hot  endeavouring  to  lift 
one  of  these  pieces  up  off  the  plate.  He  had  asked  her, 
Use  not  being  in  the  room,  what  she  was  doing.  As 
usual  she  had  whispered — it  was  another  of  her  fancies 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  237 

that  she  had  lost  her  voice — and  when  he  bent  down  he 
found  that  she  was  whispering  the  word  stuck. 

He  had  taken  up  the  piece  to  show  her  she  was  mis- 
taken, and  had  shaken  the  plate  and  made  all  the 
pieces  on  it  spring  about,  and  she  had  watched  him 
and  then  begun  over  again  to  behave  as  if  she  could 
not  lift  one. 

Then  she  dropped  her  hands  down  on  to  the  sheet 
and  looked  up  at  him  and  began  to  whisper  something 
else.  "Heavy  "  she  whispered,  but  not,  he  was  glad  to 
say,  without  at  least  some  sort  of  a  slight  smile  indi- 
cating her  awareness  that  she  was  conducting  herself 
childishly,  and  Use,  coming  in,  had  taken  the  bread 
and  fed  her  as  if  it  were  she  who  were  the  baby  and 
not  his  son. 

Herr  Dremmel,  therefore,  was  both  puzzled  and 
worried.  He  was  still  more  puzzled  and  worried  when, 
on  the  very  day  week  after  the  birth,  Use  came  to  him 
and  said  that  Frau  Pastor  was  shaking  her  bed  about 
and  that  she  feared  if  she  did  not  soon  stop  the  bed, 
which  was  enfeebled  as  Herr  Pastor  knew  by  having 
two  mended  legs  among  its  four,  might  break.  She 
had  reminded  Frau  Pastor  of  this,  but  she  did  not 
seem  to  care  and  continued  to  shake  it. 

"The  good  bed,"  said  Use,  "the  excellent  bed.  Tin- 
best  we  have  in  the  house.  Would  Herr  Pastor  step 
across?" 

Herr  Pastor  stepped  across,  and  found  Ingeborg 
shivering  with  such  astonishing  energy  that  the  bed 
did,  as  Use  had  described,  rattle  threateningly. 

In  reply  to  his  questions  Use  told  him,  lor  Ingeborg 
was  too  busy  shaking  to  explain,  I  hat  nothing  had 
happened  except  that  Frau  Pastor  said  she  was  thirsty 
and  would  like  a  glass  of  cold  water,  and  she  had  fetched 


238  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

it  fresh  from  the  pump  and  Frau  Pastor  had  asked  to 
be  held  up  to  drink  it  and  had  drunk  it  all  at  one  draught 
and  immediately  fallen  back  and  begun  this  shaking. 

"Ingeborg,  what  is  this?"  said  Herr  Dremmel  with 
a  show  of  severity,  for  he  had  heard  severity  acted  as 
a  sedative  on  those  who,  for  instance,  shake. 

When,  however,  Ingeborg,  instead  of  replying  like  a 
reasonable  being,  continued  to  shake  and  seem  unaware 
of  his  presence,  and  when  on  touching  her  he  found 
that  in  spite  of  the  shivering  she  was  extremely  hot,  he 
sent  Johann  for  Frau  Dosch,  who  on  seeing  her  could 
only  suggest  that  Johann  should  drive  on  into  Meuk 
and  bring  out  the  doctor. 

And  so  it  was  that  Ingeborg,  coming  suddenly  out 
of  a  thin,  high  confusion  in  which  she  seemed  to  have 
been  hurrying  since  the  world  began,  found  it  was 
night,  for  lamps  were  alight,  and  people — many  people 
— were  round  her  bed,  and  one  was  a  man  she  did  not 
know  with  a  short  black  beard.  But  she  did  know 
him.  It  was  the  doctor.  It  flashed  across  her  instantly. 
Then  she  had  really  got  to  being  in  extremity.  That 
woman  had  said  so,  that  big  woman  who  used  to  come 
and  see  her  in  the  garden  long  ago.  And  Use — that 
was  Use  at  the  foot  of  the  bed  crying.  When  one  was 
in  extemity  Uses  did  cry.  She  found  herself  stroking 
the  doctor's  beard  and  begging  him  not  to  let  go  of 
her.  She  was  reminded  that  it  was  unusual  to  stroke 
the  doctor's  beard  by  his  drawing  back,  but  she  thought 
it  silly  not  to  let  one's  beard  be  stroked  if  somebody 
wanted  to.  She  heard  herself  saying,  "Don't  let  go  of  me 

—please — don't  let  go  of  me — please "but  it  seemed 

that  he  could  not  hold  her,  for  she  was  caught  away 
almost  immediately  again  into  that  thin,  hot,  hurrying 
confusion,  high  up  in  the  treble,  high  up  at  the  very  top, 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  239 

where  all  the  violins  were  insisting  together  over  and 
over  again  on  one  thin,  quivering,  anxious  note.    .    .    . 

"It  is  impossible,"  said  the  doctor,  a  Jew  from 
Konigsberg,  lately  married  and  set  up  at  Meuk,  look- 
ing at  Frau  Dosch,  "that  this  should  have  happened." 

And  he  proceeded  to  explain  to  Herr  Dremmel  that 
the  child  in  future  would  have  to  seek  its  nourishment 
in  tins. 

"What?"  exclaimed  Herr  Dremmel. 

"Tins,"  said  the  doctor. 

"Tins?  For  my  son?  When  there  are  cows  in  the 
world?  Cows,  which  at  least  more  closely  resemble 
mothers  than  tins?" 

"Tins,"  repeated  the  doctor  firmly.  "Herr  Pastor, 
cows  have  moods  just  as  frequently  as  women.  They 
are  fed  unwisely,  and  behold  immediately  a  mood. 
Not  having  the  gift  of  tongues  they  cannot  convey  their 
mood  by  speech,  and  baffled  at  one  end  they  fall  back 
upon  the  other  and  express  their  malignancies  in  milk." 

Herr  Dremmel  was  silent.  The  complications  and 
difficulties  of  family  life  were  being  lit  up  into  a  picture 
at  which  he  could  only  gaze  in  dismay.  On  the  bed 
Ingeborg  was  ceaselessly  turning  her  head  from  one 
side  to  the  other  and  rubbing  her  hands  weakly  up 
and  down,  up  and  down  over  the  sheet.  While  he 
talked  the  doctor  was  watching  her.  Frau  Dosch  stood 
looking  on  witli  a  locked-up  mouth.  Use  wept.  The 
baby  whimpered. 

The  doctor  said  lie  would  send  some  tins  of  patent 
food  out  by  Johann  on  his  return  journey;  if  there 
should  be  much  delay  and  the  baby  was  noisy,  said  the 

doctor,  a  little  water 

'Water!     My  son  fed  on   water?"   exclaimed   Herr 
Dremmel.     "Heavens  above  us,  what  diet  is  this  for  a 


240  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

good  German?    Tins  and  water  in  the  place  of  blood 
and  iron?" 

The  doctor  shrugged  his  shoulder,  and  gently  put- 
ting down  Ingeborg's  hand  which  he  had  been  holding 
for  a  moment  to  see  if  he  could  quiet  it,  prepared  to 
go  away,  saying  he  would  also  send  out  a  nurse. 

"Ah,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  greatly  relieved,  "you 
know  of  a  thoroughly  healthy  wet  one?" 

"Completely  dry.  For  Frau  Pastor.  Impossible 
to  leave  her  unnursed.  There  will  be  bandages.  There 
must  be  punctuality  and  care" — he  looked  at  Frau 
Dosch — "cleanliness,  efficiency" — at  each  word  he 
looked  at  Frau  Dosch.  "I  will  come  out  to-morrow. 
Perfectly  normal,  perfectly  normal,"  he  said,  as  he  got 
into  the  carriage  while  Herr  Dremmel  stood  ruefully 
on  the  doorstep. 

The  illness  went  its  perfectly  normal  course.  A 
nurse  came  out  from  the  principal  Kbnigsberg  hospital 
and  the  disordered  house  at  once  became  perfectly 
normal,  too.  Use  returned  to  her  kitchen,  the  baby 
was  appeased  by  its  scientific  diet,  Ingeborg's  bed 
grew  smooth  and  spotless,  her  room  was  quiet,  nobody 
knocked  any  more  against  the  foot  of  the  bed  in  pass- 
ing or  shook  the  floor  and  herself  by  heavy  treading; 
she  was  no  longer  tended  with  the  same  vigour  that 
made  the  kitchen  floor  spotless  and  the  pig  happy; 
bandages,  unguents,  and  disinfectants  stood  neatly  in 
rows,  clean  white  cloths  covered  the  tables,  the  windows 
were  wide  open  day  and  night,  and  lamps  left  off  burn- 
ing exactly  where  they  shone  into  her  eyes.  Every- 
thing was  normal,  including  the  behaviour  of  the 
abscess,  which  went  its  calm  way,  unhurried  and  undis- 
turbed by  anything  the  doctor  tried  to  do  to  it,  ripening, 
reaching   its   perfection,    declining,    in   an   order   and 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  241 

obedience  to  causation  that  was  beautiful  for  those 
capable  of  appreciating  it.  Everything  was  normal 
except  the  inside  of  Ingeborg's  mind. 

There,  in  a  black  recess,  crouched  fear.  She  sus- 
pected life.  She  had  lost,  on  that  awful  night  and  day 
and  night  again  of  birth,  confidence  in  it.  She  knew 
it  now.  It  was  all  death.  Death  and  cruelty.  Death 
and  nameless  horror.  Death  pretending,  death  wait- 
ing, waiting  to  be  cruel  again,  to  get  her  again,  and 
get  her  altogether  next  time.  What  was  this  talk  of 
life?  It  was  only  just  death.  The  others  didn't  know. 
She  knew.  She  had  seen  it  and  been  with  it.  She  had 
been  down  into  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  it  uncom- 
forted.  Her  eyes  had  been  wide  open  while  she  went. 
Each  step  of  the  way  was  cut  into  her  memory.  They 
had  let  her  miss  nothing.  She  knew.  Out  there  in 
the  garden  the  rustling  leaves  looked  gay,  and  the  sun 
looked  cheerful,  and  the  flowers  she  had  so  confidently 
loved  looked  beautiful  and  kind.  They  were  deatli 
dressed  up.  Oh,  she  was  not  to  be  taken  in  any  more. 
She  knew  the  very  sound  of  him.  Often,  while  she  was 
in  that  fever,  she  had  heard  him  coming  across  the 
yard,  up  the  steps,  along  the  passage,  pausing  just 
outside  the  door,  going  back  each  time,  but  only  for  a 
little  while.  He  would  come  again.  The  horror  of  it. 
The  horror  of  living  with  that  waiting.  The  horror  of 
knowing  that  love  ended  in  tills,  that  new  life  was  only 
more  death.  Fearfully  she  lay  staring  at  the  realities 
that  she  alone  in  that  house  could  see.  And  she  could 
hear  her  heart  beating— if  only  she  needn't  have  to 
hear  her  heart  beating — it  beat  in  little  irregular  beats, 
little  flutters,  and  then  a  pause — and  then  a  sudden 
ping — oh,  the  weak,  weak  helplessness — nothing  to  hold 
on  to  anywhere  in  all  the  world — even  the  bed  hadn't 


242  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

an  underneath— she  was  always  dropping  downwards, 
downwards,  through  it,  away.    .    .    . 

Sometimes  the  nurse  came  and  stood  beside  her,  and 
with  a  big  wholesome  hand  smoothed  back  the  hair 
from  her  absorbed  and  frowning  forehead.  'What  are 
you  thinking  about?"  she  would  ask,  bending  down 
and  smiling. 

But  Ingeborg  never  told. 

To  Herr  Dremmel  the  nurse  counselled  patience. 

He  said  he  had  been  having  it  for  ten  months. 

"You  must  have  some  more,"  said  the  nurse,  "and 
it  will  come  right." 

And  so  it  gradually  did.  Slowly  Ingeborg  began  to 
creep  up  the  curve  of  life  again.  It  was  a  long  and 
hesitating  creeping,  but  there  did  come  a  time  when 
there  were  definite  and  widening  gaps  in  her  vision  of 
the  realities.  The  first  day  she  had  meat  for  dinner 
she  lost  sight  of  them  for  several  hours.  The  next  day 
she  had  meat  she  shut  her  mouth.  The  day  after,  a 
feeling  of  shame  for  her  black  thoughts  crept  into  her 
mind  and  stayed  there.  The  day  after  that,  when 
she  not  only  had  meat  but  began  a  new  tonic,  she 
asked  for  Robertlet  and  put  her  arms  round  him  all 
by  herself. 

Then  the  nurse  slipped  out  and  called  Herr  Dremmel; 
and  he,  hurrying  in  and  finding  her  propped  on  pillows, 
holding  his  baby  and  smiling  down  at  him  just  as  he 
had  pictured  she  would,  went  down  once  more  on  his 
knees  beside  the  bed  and  took  the  whole  group,  mother, 
baby,  and  pillows,  into  his  arms,  and  quite  frankly  and 
openly  cried  for  joy. 

"Little  sheep  .  .  .  little  sheep,  .  ."he  kept  on 
saying.  And  Ingeborg,  having  reached  that  point  in 
convalescence  where  one  never  misses  a  chance  of  cry- 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  243 

ing,  at  once  cried,  too;  and  Robertlet  beginning  to  cry, 
the  nurse,  who  laughed,  broke  up  the  group. 

After  that  things  grew  better  every  day.  Ingeborg 
visibly  improved;  every  hour  almost  it  was  possible  to 
see  some  new  step  made  back  to  her  original  self.  She 
clung  to  the  nurse,  who  stayed  on  long  after  the  carry- 
ing into  the  next  room  stage  had  been  passed  and  who 
did  not  leave  her  till  she  was  walking  about  quite  gaily 
in  the  garden  and  beginning  to  do  the  things  with 
Robertlet  that  she  had  planned  she  would.  She  seemed, 
after  the  long  months  of  ugliness,  to  be  prettier  than 
before.  She  was  so  glad,  so  grateful,  to  be  back  again, 
and  her  gladness  lit  her  up.  It  was  so  wonderful  to  be 
back  in  the  bright  world  of  free  movement,  to  be  pres- 
ently going  to  punt,  and  presently  be  off  for  a  day  in 
the  forests,  to  be  able  to  arrange,  to  be  in  clear  possession 
of  her  time  and  her  body.  The  deliciousness  of  health, 
the  happiness  of  being  just  normal  made  her  radiant. 

The  September  that  year  was  one  of  ripe  days  and 
glowing  calms.  Neither  Herr  Dremmel  nor  Ingeborg 
had  ever  been  quite  so  happy.  He  loved  her  as  warmly 
as  before  their  marriage.  He  found  himself  noticing 
things  like  the  fine  texture  of  her  skin,  and  observing 
how  pretty  the  back  of  her  neck  was  and  the  way  her 
hair  behaved  just  at  that  point.  She  was  the  brightest 
adornment  and  finish  to  a  man's  house,  he  said  to  him- 
self, independently  busy  will)  her  baby  and  her  house- 
keeping, not  worrying  him,  not  having  to  be  thought 
about  in  his  laboratory  when  lie  wished  to  work,  ab- 
sorbed in  womanly  interests,  cheerful,  affectionate, 
careful  of  her  child.  It  was  delightful  to  have  her  sit 
on  his  knee  again,  delightful  to  hear  her  talk  the  sweet 
and  sometimes  even  amusing  nonsense  with  which  her 
head  seemed  full,  delightful  to  see  her  sudden  solemnity 


244  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

when  there  was  anything  to  be  done  for  the  personal 
comfort  of  Robertlet. 

"Aren't  we  happy"  said  Ingeborg  one  evening 
when  they  were  strolling  after  supper  along  the  path 
through  the  rye-field,  all  the  old  fearlessness  and  con- 
fidence in  life  surging  in  her  again.  "Did  you  ever 
know  anything  like  it?" 

"It  is  you,  my  little  sun  among  sheep,"  said  Herr 
Dremmel,  standing  still  to  kiss  her  as  energetically  as 
though  he  had  been  beneath  the  pear-tree  in  the  Bish- 
op's garden,  "it  is  all  you." 

"And  presently,"  she  said,  "I'm  going  to  do  such 
things — Robert,  such  things.  First,  I'm  going  to  be  a 
proper  pastor's  wife  at  last  and  turn  to  in  the  village 
thoroughly.     And  besides  that  I'm  going  to " 

She  stopped  and  flung  out  her  hands  with  a  familiar 
gesture. 

"Well,  little  hare?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know — but  it's  fun  being  alive,  isn't 
it?  I  feel  as  if  I'd  only  got  to  stretch  up  my  hands 
to  all  those  stars  and  catch  as  many  of  them  as  I 
want  to." 

And  hardly  had  the  nurse  left  and  the  household 
had  returned  to  its  normal  arrangements,  and  the 
parlour  was  no  longer  disfigured  by  Herr  Dremmel's 
temporary  bed,  and  life  was  clear  again,  and  all  one 
had  to  do  was  to  go  ahead  praising  the  dear  God  who 
had  made  it  so  spacious  and  so  kind,  than  she  began  to 
have  her  second  child. 


PART  III 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THERE  was  a  little  bay  about  five  minutes'  pad- 
dle down  the  lake  round  a  corner  made  by  the 
jutting  out  of  reeds.  You  took  your  punt  round 
the  end  of  an  arm  of  reeds,  and  you  found  a  small  beach 
of  fine  shells,  an  oak-tree  with  half-bared  roots  over- 
hanging one  side  of  it,  and  a  fringe  of  coarse  grass  along 
the  top.  On  this  you  sat  and  listened  to  the  faint  wash 
of  the  water  at  your  feet  and  watched  the  sun  flashing 
off  the  wings  of  innumerable  gulls.  You  couldn't  see 
BCokensee  and  Kokensee  couldn't  see  vou,  and  you 
clasped  your  hands  round  your  knees  and  thought. 
Behind  you  were  the  rye-fields.  Opposite  you  was  the 
forest.  It  was  a  place  of  gentleness,  of  fair  afternoon 
light,  of  bland  colours — silvers,  and  blues,  and  the  pale 
gold  that  reeds  take  on  in  October. 

Ingeborg  did  not  bring  Robert  let  to  this  place. 
She  decided,  after  four  months'  close  association  with 
him  had  cleared  her  mind  of  misconceptions,  that  he 
was  too  young.  She  would  not  admit,  with  all  her 
dreams  about  what  she  was  going  to  do  with  him  still 
vivid  in  her  memory,  that  she  preferred  to  be  alone. 
She  would  not  admit  that  she  did  anything  but  love 
him  ardently.  He  was  so  good.  He  never  cried.  Xor 
did  he  ever  do  what  she  supposed  must  be  the  converse 
of  crying,  crow.  He  neither  cried  nor  crowed.  lie 
neither  complained  nor  applauded.  He  ate  with 
appetite  and  he  slept   with  punctuality.      He  grew  big 

247 


248  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

and  round  while  you  looked  at  him.  Who  would  not 
esteem  him?  She  did  esteem  him — more  highly  per- 
haps than  she  had  ever  esteemed  anybody;  but  the 
ardent  love  she  had  been  told  a  mother  felt  for  her  first- 
born was  a  thing  about  which  she  had  to  keep  on  saying 
to  herself,  "Of  course." 

He  was  a  grave  baby;  and  she  did  her  best  by  cheery 
gesticulations  and  encouraging,  humorous  sounds,  to 
accustom  him  to  mirth,  but  her  efforts  were  fruitless. 
Then  one  day  as  she  was  bending  over  him  trying  to 
extract  a  smile  by  an  elaborate  tickling  of  his  naked 
ribs  she  caught  his  eye,  and  instantly  she  jerked  back 
and  stared  down  at  him  in  dismay,  for  she  had  had  the 
sudden  horrid  conviction  that  what  she  was  tickling  was 
her  mother-in-law. 

That  was  the  first  time  she  noticed  it,  but  the  re- 
semblance was  unmistakable,  was,  when  you  had  once 
seen  it,  overwhelming.  There  was  no  trace,  now  that 
she  tremblingly  examined  him,  of  either  Robert  or 
herself;  and  as  for  her  own  family,  what  had  become  of 
all  that  very  real  beauty,  the  beauty  of  the  Bishop,  the 
dazzlingness  of  Judith,  and  the  sweet  regularities  of  her 
mother? 

Robertlet  was  as  much  like  Frau  Dremmel  as  he 
might  have  been  if  Frau  Dremmel  had  herself  produced 
him  in  some  miraculous  manner  entirely  unassisted. 
The  resemblance  was  flagrant.  It  grew  with  every 
bottle.  He  had  the  same  steady  eyes.  He  had  the 
same  prolonged  silences.  His  nose  was  a  copy.  His 
head,  hairless,  was  more  like  Frau  Dremmel's,  thought 
Ingeborg,  than  Frau  Dremmel's  could  ever  have  possi- 
bly been,  and  if  ever  his  hair  grew,  she  said  to  herself 
gazing  at  him  wide-eyed,  it  would  undoubtedly  do  it 
from  the  beginning  in  a  knob.     Gradually  as  the  days 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  249 

passed  and  the  likeness  appeared  more  and  more  she 
came,  when  she  tubbed  him  and  powdered  his  many 
creases,  to  have  a  sensation  of  infinite  indiscretion; 
and  she  announced  to  Herr  Dremmel,  who  did  not  un- 
derstand, that  Robertlet's  first  word  would  certainly 
be  Bratkartojf'el. 

"Why?"  asked  Herr  Dremmel,  from  the  other  side 
of  a  wall  of  thinking. 

"You'll  see  if  it  isn't,"  nodded  Ingeborg,  with  a  per- 
turbed face. 

But  Robertlet's  first  word,  and  for  a  long  time  his 
only  one,  was  Nein.  His  next,  which  did  not  join  it 
till  some  months  later,  was  Adieu,  which  is  the  German 
for  good-bye  and   which  he  said   whenever  anybody 

arrived. 

"He  isn't  very  hospitable"  thought  Ingeborg;  and 
remembered  with  a  chill  that  not  once  since  her  mar- 
riage had  her  mother-in-law  invited  her  to  her  house 
in  Meuk.  But  she  made  excuses  for  him  immediately. 
"Everybody,"  she  said  to  herself,  "feels  a  little  stiff 
at  first." 

To  this  beautiful  corner  of  the  lake,  for  it  was  very 
beautiful  those  delicate  autumn  afternoons,  she  went 
during  Robertlet's  dinner  sleep  to  do  what  she  called 
think  things  out;  and  she  sat  on  the  little  shells  with 
her  hands  round  her  knees,  staring  across  the  quiet 
water  at  the  line  of  pale  reeds  along  the  other  shore, 
doing  it.  Presently,  however,  she  perceived  that  her 
thinking  was  more  a  general  discomfort  of  the  mind 
punctuated  irregularly  by  flashes  than  anything  that 
could  honestly  he  called  clear.  Things  would  not  be 
thought  out — at  least  they  would  not  be  thought  out 
by  her;  and  she  was  feeling  sick  again;  and  how,  sin- 
asked    herself,    can    people    who   are    busy  being  sick 


250  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

be  anything  but  sick?  Besides,  things  wouldn't  bear 
thinking  out.  Her  eyes  grew  bright  with  fear  when 
one  of  those  flashes  lit  up  what  was  once  more  ahead 
of  her.  It  was  like  a  scarlet  spear  of  terror  suddenly 
leaping  at  her  heart. 

No,  thought  Ingeborg,  turning  quickly  away  all 
cold  and  trembling,  better  not  think;  better  just  sit 
in  the  sun  and  wonder  what  Robertlet  would  look  like 
later  on  if  he  persisted  in  being  exactly  like  Frau 
Dremmel  and  yet  in  due  season  had  to  go  into  trousers, 
and  what  would  happen  if  the  next  one  were  like  Frau 
Dremmel,  too,  and  whether  she  would  presently  be 
teaching  a  row  of  little  mothers-in-law  its  infant  hymns. 
The  thought  of  Frau  Dremmel  become  plural,  dimin- 
ished into  socks  and  pinafores,  standing  neatly  at  her 
knee  being  taught  to  lisp  in  numbers,  seized  her  with 
laughter.  She  laughed  and  laughed;  and  only  stopped 
when  she  discovered  that  what  she  was  really  doing  was 
crying. 

"Perhaps  it's  talking  I  want  more  than  thinking," 
she  said  to  Herr  Dremmel  at  last,  returning  from 
one  of  these  barren  expeditions  in  search  of  under- 
standing. 

She  said  it  a  little  timidly,  for  she  was  already  less 
to  him  than  she  had  been  in  that  brief  interval  of 
health,  and  knew  that  with  every  month  she  would  be 
less  and  less.  It  was  odd  how  sure  of  him  she  was 
when  she  was  not  going  to  have  a  baby,  of  what  an 
easy  confidence  in  his  love,  and  how  he  seemed  to  slip 
away  from  her  when  she  was.  Already,  though  she 
had  only  just  begun,  he  was  miles  away  from  the 
loving  mood  in  which  he  folded  her  in  his  arms  and 
called  her  his  little  sheep. 

Herr  Dremmel,  who  was  supping,  and  was  not  in 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  251 

possession  of  the  context,  recommended  thinking.  He 
added  after  a  pause  that  only  a  woman  would  have 
suggested  a  distinction. 

Ingeborg  did  not  make  the  obvious  reply,  but  said 
she  thought  if  she  might  talk  to  somebody,  to  Robert, 
for  instance,  and  with  her  hand  in  his,  rather  tight  in 
his  while  she  talked,  so  that  she  might  feel  safe,  feel 
not  quite  so  loose  and  unheld  together  in  an  enormous, 
awful  world — — 

Herr  Dremmel  looked  at  his  watch  and  said  perhaps 
he  would  have  time  to  hold  her  hand  next  week. 

A  few  days  later  she  said,  equally  without  supplying 
him  with  the  context,  "It's  blessing  disguising  itself, 
that's  what  it  is." 

Herr  Dremmel,  who  again  was  supping,  said  nothing, 
preferring  to  wait. 

"Blessing  only  pretending  to  be  cruelty.  Not  really 
cruelty  at  all." 

Herr  Dremmel  still  preferred  to  wait. 

"I  thought  at  first  it  was  cruelty,"  she  said,  "but 
now  I  think  perhaps — perhaps  it's  blessing." 

"What  did  you  think  was  cruelty,  Ingeborg?"  asked 
Herr  Dremmel,  who  disliked  the  repetition  of  such  a 
word. 

"Having  this  next  baby  so  quickly — without  time 
to  forget." 

Her  eyes  grew  bright. 

"Cruelty,  Ingeborg?" 

Herr  Dremmel  said  one  did  not,  when  one  was  a 
pastor's  wife,  call  Providence  names. 

"That's  what  I'm  saying,"  she  said.  "I  thought 
at  first  it  was  cruel,  but  now  I  sec  it's  really  ever  so 
much  better  not  to  waste  lime  between  one's  children, 
and  then  be  well  for  the  rest  of  one's  days.     It — it  will 


252  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

make  the  contrast  afterwards,  when  one  has  done  with 
pain,  so  splendid." 

She  looked  at  him  and  pressed  her  hands  together. 
Vivid  recollections  lit  her  eyes.  "But  I'd  give  up 
these  splendid  contrasts  very  willingly, ,"  she  whispered, 
her  face  gone  suddenly  terror-stricken. 

Herr  Dremmel  said  that  family  life  had  always  been 
praised  not  only  for  its  beauty  but  for  its  necessity  as 
the  foundation  of  the  State. 

"You  told  me,"  said  Ingeborg,  who  had  a  trick 
which  good  men  sometimes  found  irritating  of  remem- 
bering everything  they  had  ever  said,  "the  foundation 
of  the  State  was  manure." 

Herr  Dremmel  said  so  it  was.  And  so  was  family 
life.  He  would  not,  he  informed  her,  quibble  over 
terms.  What  he  wished  to  make  clear  was  that  there 
could  not  be  family  life  without  a  family  to  have  it  in. 

"And  don't  you  call  you  and  me  and  Robertlet  a 
family?  "  she  asked. 

"One  child?"  said  Herr  Dremmel.  "You  would 
limit  the  family  to  one  child?  That  is  a  highly  un- 
christian line  of  conduct." 

"But  the  Christian  lines  of  conduct  seem  to  hurt 
so,"  murmured  Ingeborg.  "Oh,  I  know  there  have  to 
be  brothers  and  sisters,"  she  added  quickly  before  he 
could  speak,  "and  it  is  best  to  get  it  over  and  have 
done  with  it.  It's  only  when  I'm — it's  only  sometimes 
that  I  think  Robertlet  would  have  been  enough  family 
till— till  I'd  had  time  to  forget " 

Again  the  light  of  terror  came  into  her  eyes.  She 
knew  it  was  there.  She  looked  down  at  her  plate  to 
hide  it. 

Twice  after  that  she  came  back  from  her  thinking 
down  by  the  lake  and  attempted  to  talk  to  him  about 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  253 

questions  of  life  and  death.  Herr  Dremmel  was  bored 
by  questions  of  life  and  death  unless  they  were  his 
own  ones.  He  met  them,  however,  patiently.  She 
arrived  panting,  for  it  was  uphill  back  to  the  house, 
desperately  needing  her  vision  rubbed  a  little  clearer 
against  his  so  that  she  might  reach  out  to  reassurance 
and  courage,  and  he  took  on  an  air  of  patience  almost 
before  she  had  begun.  In  the  presence  of  that  pre- 
mature resignation  she  faltered  off  into  silence.  Also 
what  she  had  wanted  to  say  got  tangled  into  the  silliest 
sentences — she  heard  them  being  silly  as  they  came 
out.  No  wonder  he  looked  resigned.  She  could  have 
wept  with  chagrin  at  her  inarticulateness,  her  want  of 
real  education,  her  incapacity  for  getting  her  thoughts 
torn  away  from  their  confusion  and  safely  landed  into 
speech.  And  there  stood  Robert,  waiting,  with  that 
air  of  patience     . 

But  how  odd  it  was,  the  difference  between  his  talk 
before  she  was  going  to  have  a  baby  and  his  silence — 
surely  resigned  silence — when  she  was!  She  wished 
she  knew  more  about  husbands.  She  wished  that 
during  the  years  at  home  instead  of  writing  all  those 
diocesan  letters  she  had  ripely  reflected  on  the  Conju- 
galities. 

As  the  days  went  by  her  need  of  somebody  to  talk 
to,  her  dread  of  being  alone  with  her  imagination  and 
its  flashes,  became  altogether  intolerable.  She  went  at 
last,  driven  by  panic,  to  the  village  mothers,  asking 
anxious  questions  about  how  they  had  felt,  how  they 
had  managed,  going  round  on  days  when  she  was 
better  to  the  cottages  where  families  were  longest. 
But  nothing  came  of  this;  the  attitude  everywhere 
was  a  dull  acceptance,  a  shrug  of  the  shoulder,  a 
tiredness. 


254  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

Then  she  sought  out  the  postman's  wife,  who  looked 
particularly  motherly  and  bright,  and  found  that  she 
was  childless. 

Then  she  met  the  forester  one  day  in  the  woods, 
and  was  so  far  gone  in  need  that  she  almost  began  to 
ask  him  her  anxious  questions,  for  he  looked  more 
motherly  even  than  the  postman's  wife. 

Then  she  thought  of  Baroness  Glambeck,  who  before 
Robertlet's  birth  had  been  helpful  in  practical  ways — 
would  she  not  be  helpful  now  in  these  spiritual  stresses? 
— and  she  walked  over  there  with  difficulty  one  after- 
noon in  November  through  the  deep  wet  sand,  approach- 
ing her  as  one  naked  soul  delivered  by  its  urgencies 
from  the  web  of  reticence  and  convention  approaches 
another.  But  nothing  could  be  less  naked  that  day 
than  the  Baroness's  soul.  It  was  dressed  even  to  gloves 
and  a  bonnet.  It  had  no  urgencies;  and  Hildebrand 
von  Glambeck  was  there,  the  only  son  in  the  family  of 
six,  the  member  of  it  who  had  married  most  money, 
and  his  mother  was  proudly  pouring  out  coffee  for  him 
in  festal  silk. 

It  was  entirely  contrary  to  custom  for  one's  pastor's 
wife  to  walk  in  without  having  first  inquired  whether 
her  visit  would  be  acceptable;  and  when  the  Baroness 
perceived  the  sandy  and  disordered  figure  coming  to- 
wards her  down  the  long  room  she  was  not  only  annoyed 
but  dismayed.  She  had  not  seen  this  dearest  of  her 
children  for  six  months,  and  it  was  the  first  opportunity 
she  had  had  since  his  arrival  the  evening  before  of 
being  alone  with  him,  for  he  had  brought  a  friend  with 
him  from  Berlin,  and  not  till  after  luncheon  had  the 
friend,  who  painted,  been  satisfactorily  disposed  of  out 
of  doors  in  the  park,  where  he  announced  his  intention 
of  staying  as  long  as  the  sun  stayed  on  a  certain  beech- 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  255 

tree.  She  wanted  to  ask  her  boy  questions.  She  had 
sent  the  Baron  out  riding  round  his  farms  so  as  to  be 
able  to  ask  questions.  She  wanted  to  know  about  his 
life  in  Berlin,  to  her  so  remote  and  so  full  of  drawbacks 
that  yet  glittered,  a  high,  dangerous,  less  truly  aristo- 
cratic life  than  this  of  lofty  stagnation  in  God's  prov- 
inces, but  shone  upon  after  all  by  the  presence  of  her 
Emperor  and  King.  In  her  heart  she  believed  that 
the  Almighty  had  also  some  years  ago,  probably  about 
the  time  of  her  marriage  when  she,  too,  retired  into  them, 
withdrawn  into  the  provinces,  and  there  particularly 
presided  over  those  best  of  the  Fatherland's  nobles  who 
stayed  with  a  pure  persistency  in  the  places  where  they 
happened  to  have  been  born.  On  His  departure  for 
the  country,  the  Baroness  decided,  He  had  handed  over 
Berlin  and  Potsdam  to  the  care  of  the  First  of  His 
children,  her  Emperor  and  King;  and  so  it  was  that 
the  provinces  were  higher  and  more  truly  aristocratic 
than  Berlin  and  Potsdam,  and  so  it  was  that  Berlin  and 
Potsdam  nevertheless  ran  them  very  close. 

And  now,  just  as  she  had  so  cleverly  contrived  this 
hour  with  Hildebrand  for  getting  at  all  those  intimate 
details  of  his  life  that  a  mother  loves  but  does  not  care 
to  talk  about  before  her  husband,  this  hour  for  hearing 
about  his  children,  his  meals,  his  money,  his  dear  wife's 
success  in  society  and  appearances,  I  hanks  to  her  having 
married  into  the  nobility,  at  Court,  his  own  health,  his 
indigestion — that  ancient  tormentor  of  his  peace,  armcr 
Junge — and  whether  he  had  seen  or  heard  anything  of 
poor  Emmi,  his  eldest  sister,  who  had  miserably  married 
six  thousand  marks  a  year  and  lived  impossibly  at 
Spandau  and  could  not  be  got  to  admit  she  did  not 
like  it — just  as  she  was  going  to  be  satisfied  on  all 
these   points    came    that    eccentric   and    pushing    Fran 


256  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

Pastor  and  spoilt  it  all.  Also  Hildebrand  was  in  the 
very  middle  of  one  of  those  sad  stories  of  scandal  that 
one  wishes  one  had  not  to  listen  to  but  naturally  wants 
to  hear  the  end  of. 

So  great  was  the  Baroness's  disappointment  that 
she  found  it  impossible  to  stop  herself  from  affecting 
inability  to  recognise  the  Frau  Pastor  till  she  was 
actually  touching  the  coffee  table.  "Ah,"  she  then 
said,  not  getting  up  but  slowly  putting  out  her  hand 
to  take  the  hand  that  was  being  offered,  and  staring  as 
though  she  were  trying  to  remember  where  and  when 
she  had  seen  her  before,  "Ah — Frau  Pastor?  This  is 
indeed  an  honour." 

"Present  me,  mamma,"  said  Hildebrand,  who  had 
got  on  to  his  feet  the  instant  Ingeborg  appeared  in  the 
doorway. 

The  ceremony  performed  he  sank  again  into  his 
chair  and  did  nothing  more  at  all,  being  waited  on  by 
his  mother  and  leaving  it  to  her  to  see  that  the  visitor 
was  given  cream  and  sugar  and  cake,  until  the  moment 
arrived  when  Ingeborg,  made  abundantly  and  elabo- 
rately aware  that  she  was  interrupting,  prepared  crest- 
fallen to  go  away  again.  Then  once  more  he  started 
up,  alert  and  with  his  heels  together. 

'Well,  and  what  did  her  husband  do?"  asked  the 
Baroness,  turning  again  to  Hildebrand  as  soon  as  Inge- 
borg had  been  got  quiet  on  a  chair  with  coffee,  deter- 
mined to  hear  the  end  of  the  story. 

"My  dear  mother,"  said  Hildebrand,  shrugging  his 
shoulders  up  to  his  ears,  "what  could  he  do? " 

"He  shot  her?" 

"Of  course." 

"Naturally,"  said  the  Baroness,  nodding  approval. 
"Was  she  killed?" 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  257 


<<- 


:No.  Badly  wounded.  But  it  was  enough.  His 
honour  was  avenged." 

"And  she  will  not,"  said  the  Baroness  grimly,  "begin 
these  tricks  again." 

Ingeborg  roused  herself  with  an  effort  to  say  some- 
thing. She  was  extraordinarily  disappointed  and  un- 
nerved by  not  finding  the  Baroness  alone.  'Why  did 
he  shoot  her?"  she  asked.  It  seemed  to  her  in  her 
tiredness  so  very  energetic  of  him  to  have  shot  her. 

The  Baroness  turned  a  cold  eye  on  her.  "Because, 
Frau  Pastor,"  she  said,  "she  was  his  sinning  wife." 

"Oh,"  said  Ingeborg;  and  added  an  inquiry,  in  a 
nervous  desire  to  make  for  a  brief  space  agreeable 
small  talk  before  going  away  again,  whether  in  Ger- 
many they  always  shot  each  other  when  they  sinned. 

;'Not  each  other,"  said  the  Baroness  severely.  "At 
least,  not  if  it  is  a  husband  and  his  wife.  He  alone 
shoots." 

"Oh,"  said  Ingeborg,  considering  this. 

She  was  sitting  inertly  on  her  chair,  holding  her  cup  of 
coffee  slanting,  too  much  dejected  to  drink  it. 

"And  then  does  that  make  her  love  him  again?" 
she  asked,  in  her  small  tired  voice. 

The  Baroness  did  not  answer. 

"Only  blood,"  said  Hildebrand,"  can  wipe  out  a  hus- 
band's dishonour." 

"How  nasty!"  said  Ingeborg  dejectedly. 

Life  seemed  all  blood.  She  drooped  over  her  cup, 
thinking  of  the  cruelly  with  which  tilings  were  ap- 
parently packed.  The  Baroness  and  Hildebrand,  after 
a  pregnant  silence,  turned  from  her  and  began  to  talk 
of  somebody  they  called  poor  Emmi.  Ingeborg  sat 
alone  with  her  cup.  wondering  how  she  could  get  away 
before  she  began  to  cry.     Dreadful  how  easily  she  cried 


258  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

now.  She  must  buy  some  more  handkerchiefs.  They 
seemed  lately  to  be  always  at  the  wash. 

She  roused  herself  again.  She  really  must  say  some- 
thing. As  her  way  was  when  confused  and  unnerved, 
she  caught  at  the  first  thing  she  found  tumbling  about 
in  her  mind.  '  Why  was  Emmi  poor?  "  she  asked  in  her 
small  tired  voice. 

There  was  another  pregnant  silence. 

To  shorten  it  Ingeborg  asked  whether  Emmi  was 
the  wife  who  had  been  shot — "The  sinning  one,"  she 
explained  as  nobody  answered. 

The  silence  became  awful. 

She  looked  up,  startled  by  it.  From  the  expression 
on  their  faces  and  the  general  feel  of  things  she  thought 
that  perhaps  they  wouldn't  mind  if  she  went  home  now. 

She  got  up,  dropping  the  spoon  out  of  her  saucer. 
"I— think  I  must  be  going,"  she  said.  "It's  a  long 
way  home." 

"It  seems  hardly  worth  while  to  have  come,"  said  the 
Baroness  with  extraordinary  chill. 

To  which  Ingeborg,  absorbed  in  the  failure  of  her  effort 
to  find  help  and  comfort,  answered  droopingly  "No." 

Outside  the  sun  had  just  dropped  behind  the  forest 
line,  and  she  would  have  to  walk  fast  if  she  wanted  to  be 
home  before  dark.  The  mist  was  already  rising  over 
the  meadows  beyond  the  trees  of  the  garden  and  begin- 
ning to  mix  with  the  rose  and  lilac  of  the  sky.  The 
sandy  avenue  she  had  come  along  on  that  hot  July  day 
when  first  she  discovered  Glambeck  lay  at  her  feet  in 
the  still  beauty  of  the  last  of  its  dresses  for  the  year, 
very  delicate,  very  transparent  already,  the  leaves  of  the 
beeches  almost  all  on  the  ground,  making  of  the  road  a 
ribbon  of  light.  A  November  smell  of  dampness  and 
of  peat  smoke  from  cottage  chimneys  filled  the  air. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  259 

There  was  a  brooding  peace  over  the  world,  as  though 
in  every  house,  in  every  family,  brotherly  love  must 
needs  in  such  gentleness  continue. 

She  went  carefully  down  the  steps,  for  her  body  was 
already  growing  cumbersome,  and  along  the  golden  way 
of  the  avenue.  She  tried  not  to  cry,  not  to  smudge 
the  beautiful  evening  with  her  own  disappointments. 
How  foolish  she  had  been  to  suppose  that  because  she 
wanted  to  talk  Baroness  Glambeck  would  want  to  listen ! 
Moods  did  not  coincide  so  conveniently.  She  walked 
along,  diligently  stopping  any  stray  tear  with  her  hand- 
kerchief before  it  could  disgrace  her  by  coming  out  on 
to  her  cheeks.  Presently  Baroness  Glambeck  might  pas- 
sionately want  to  listen — it  was  quite  conceivable — and 
she  herself  would  not  in  the  least  want  to  talk.  How 
foolish  it  all  was !  One  had  to  stand  on  one's  own  feet. 
It  was  no  good  going  about  calling  out  for  help.  It 
was  less  than  no  good  crying.  Some  day,  if  she  con- 
tinued intrepidly  in  this  career  of  maternity  which 
seemed  to  be  marked  out  for  her,  she,  too,  would  be 
happily  pouring  out  coffee  for  a  grown-up  and  success- 
ful man-child,  all  her  impatiences  and  pangs  long  since 
forgotten.  You  clearly  couldn't  have  a  grown-up  man- 
child  to  love  and  be  proud  of  if  you  hadn't  begun  him 
in  time.  He  had  at  some  period  or  other  to  be  begun. 
And  he  had  to  be  begun  in  time,  else  one  might  easily 
be  too  old  for  acute  appreciation.  She  went  as  quickly 
as  she  could  down  the  avenue,  thinking  on  large  valiant 
lines  and  underneath  her  thinking  feeling  altogether  for- 
saken. It  must  be  nice,  a  warm  thing  to  live  where  one's 
friends  and  relatives  were  within  reach,  where  one  could, 
for  instance,  when  one  felt  extra  lonely  go  and  have  tea 
with  one's  mot  her. 

A  man  carrying  what  seemed   to  be  a  great  deal  ot 


260  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

something  indefinite  was  coming  down  the  avenue 
towards  her.  She  looked  at  him  vaguely,  absorbed  in 
her  thoughts.  It  was  not  the  Baron,  and  except  for 
him  she  knew  nobody.  She  was  within  a  yard  or  two 
of  him  when  a  quantity  of  sheets  of  paper,  long  slender 
brushes,  odd  articles  she  did  not  recognise,  suddenly 
seemed  to  burst  out  from  his  person  and  scatter  them- 
selves over  the  beech-leaves  on  the  ground. 

"Oh,  damn!  "  said  the  man,  making  efforts  to  catch 
them. 

Ingeborg,  always  eager  to  help,  began  clumsily  to 
pick  up  those  nearest  her.  He  had  a  camp-stool  on  one 
arm,  and  what  appeared  to  be  a  mackintosh,  and  was 
altogether  greatly  hampered . 

"Look  here,  don't  do  that,"  he  exclaimed,  struggling 
with  these  things  which  also  apparently  were  slipping 
from  him. 

"Oh,  but  how  lovely!"  said  Ingeborg,  holding  one 
of  the  sheets  of  paper  she  had  picked  up  at  arm's 
length  and  staring  with  her  red  eyes  at  a  beech-tree  on 
it,  a  celestial  beech-tree  surely,  aflame  with  so  great  a 
glory  of  light  that  it  could  not  possibly  be  earthly  but 
only  the  sort  of  tree  they  have  in  heaven.  Close,  it 
was  just  splashes  of  colour;  you  had  to  hold  it  away 
from  you  to  see  it  at  all.  She  blew  away  some  grains 
of  sand  that  were  on  it  and  then  held  it  once  more  as 
far  from  her  as  her  arm  would  go.  "Oh,  but  how 
lovely!"  she  said  again.     "Look — doesn't  it  shine?" 

"  Of  course  it  shines.  That  was  what  it  was  doing,"  he 
said,  coining  and  looking  at  the  sketch  over  her  shoulder 
a  minute,  his  hands  full  of  the  things  he  had  collected 
from  the  ground.  "They  said  they'd  send  a  servant 
for  all  this,  and  they  didn't.     I  hate  carrying  things." 

"I'll  carry  some,"  said  Ingeborg. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  261 

"Nonsense.     And  you're  not  going  there." 

"I've  been.  But  I'd  go  back  as  far  as  ^ie  steps  if 
you  like." 

"Nonsense.  I'll  leave  them  at  the  foot  of  this  tree. 
He'll  see  them  all  right." 

"Not  this — you  mustn't  leave  this,"  she  said,  still 
gazing  at  the  sketch. 

"No.  I'll  take  that.  And  I'm  coming  with  you  a 
little  way,  because  I  can't  conceive  where  you  can  be 
going  to  at  this  time  of  the  day  that  isn't  to  the  Glam- 
becks',  and  I'm  curious.  Also  because  it's  so  funny  of 
you  to  be  English." 

"I  think  it's  much  funnier  of  you,"  said  Ingeborg, 
picking  up  a  pencil  out  of  a  rut  in  the  sand  and  adding 
it  to  the  pile  he  was  making  against  the  trunk  of  the 
nearest  tree.     "And  I'm  only  going  home." 

"Home?" 

He  undid  the  pile  and  began  again.  He  had  got  it 
wrong.  The  camp-stool,  of  course,  must  be  the  founda- 
tion, then  the  smaller  fly-away  things,  then,  neatly 
folded  and  tucking  them  all  in,  the  mackintosh.  She 
must  be  an  English  governess  or  superior  nurse  on  a 
neighbouring  estate  since  she  talked  of  home.  If  so  he 
did  not  want  to  go  with  her;  nothing  he  could  think  of 
seemed  to  him  quite  so  tiresome  as  an  English  governess 
or  superior  nurse. 

He  finished  tucking  in  I  he  mackintosh  and  turned 
round  and  took  the  sketch  from  her.  He  was.  she  per- 
ceived, a  long,  thin-necked  man  with  a  short  red  beard. 
She  was,  he  perceived,  somebody  in  a  badly  fitting 
tweed  coat  and  skirt,  a  person  with  a  used  sort  of  nose 
and  weak  eyes. 

"Now  then,"  he  said,  "Ell  go  with  you  anyhow  to 
the  end  of  the  avenue.     Where  is  home?" 


262  THE  PASTORS  WIFE 

'Kokensee,"  said  Ingeborg,  trotting  to  keep  up  with 
him.     "It's  the  next  village.     I'm  the  pastor's  wife." 

Ingram— for  it  was  that  celebrated  artist,  then  at 
thirty-five,  already  known  all  over  Europe  as  more 
especially  and  letting  alone  his  small  exquisite  things 
a  surprising,  indeed  a  disturbingly  surprising  painter  of 
portraits — glanced  down  at  her  and  stepped  out  more 
vigorously.  "That's  an  amusing  thing  to  be,"  he  said. 
"And  quite  new." 

"It  isn't  very  new.  I've  been  it  eighteen  months. 
Why  do  you  think  it's  amusing?" 

"It's  different  from  anything  else.  Nobody  was  ever 
a  pastor's  wife  in — what  did  you  call  it? — before." 

"Kokensee." 

"Kokensee.  Kokensee.  I  like  that.  You're  unique 
to  live  in  Kokensee.    Nobody  else  has  achieved  that." 

"It  wasn't  very  difficult.  I  just  stayed  passive  and 
was  brought." 

"And  they  didn't  mind?" 

"Who  didn't?" 

"Your  people.  Your  father  and  mother.  Or  are 
you  Melchisedec  and  never  had  any?" 

"Why  should  they  mind?" 

"Coming  so  far.  It's  rather  the  end  of  the  world. 
You're  right  up  against  the  edge  of  Russia." 

"I  wanted  to." 

"Of  course.  I  didn't  suppose  you  were  dragged 
across  Europe  by  your  hair  to  Kokensee.  I'll  come  all 
the  way  with  you.    I  want  to  see  Kokensee." 

"Don't  walk  so  fast,  then,"  said  Ingeborg,  panting. 
"I  can't  walk  like  that." 

He  looked  at  her  as  he  went  slower.  "Is  that  the 
effect  of  Kokensee?"  he  said.  "Why  can't  you  walk 
like  that?    You're  only  a  girl." 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  263 

"I'm  not  a  girl  at  all.  I'm  a  wife,  I'm  a  mother. 
I'm  everything  really  now  except  a  mother-in-law  and 
a  grandmother.  That's  all  there's  still  left  to  be.  I 
think  they're  rather  dull  things,  both  of  them." 

'You  won't  think  so  when  you've  got  there." 

"That's  the  dreadfullest  part  of  it." 

'It's  a  kindly  trick  Time  plays  on  us.  Are  you 
a  real  pastor's  wife  who  goes  about  her  parish  being  an 
example?" 

"I  haven't  yet.    But  I'm  going  to." 

"What — not  begun  in  eighteen  months?  But  what 
do  you  do  then  all  day  long?" 

"First  I  cook,  and  then  I — don't  cook." 

They  were  out  in  the  open,  on  the  bit  of  road  thai 
passed  between  meadows.  Ingram  stopped  and  looked 
at  something  over  to  the  left  with  sudden  absorbed 
attention.  She  followed  his  eyes,  but  did  not  see  much 
— a  wisp  of  mist  along  the  grass,  the  top  twigs  of  a 
willow  emerging  from  it,  and  above  it  the  faint  sky. 
He  said  nothing,  and  presently  went  on  walking  faster 
than  ever. 

"Please  go  a  little  slower,"  begged  Ingeborg,  her  heart 
thumping  with  effort. 

"I  think  you  know,"  said  Ingram,  suiting  himself 
to  her,  "you  should  be  able  to  walk  better  than  thai." 

"Yes,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"I  suppose  that's  the  danger  of  places  like  Kokensee 
— one  lets  oneself  get  slack." 

"Yes,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"You  mustn't,  you  know.  Imagine  losing  one's 
lines.  Just  think  of  the  horrible  indefinite  lines  of  a 
fat  woman." 

'Yes,"  said  Ingeborg.  'Do  you  paint  much?" 
she  asked, unable  to  endure  this  turn  of  the  conversation. 


264  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

He  looked  at  her  and  laughed.  "A  good  deal,"  he 
said.    Then  he  added,  "I'm  Ingram." 

"Is  that  your  name?    Mine's  Dremmel." 

"Edward  Ingram,"  he  said,  looking  at  her.  It  was 
inconceivable  she  should  not  know. 

" Ingeborg  Dremmel,"  she  said,  as  though  it  were  a 
game. 

He  was  silent  a  moment.  Then  he  stopped  with  a 
jerk.  "I  don't  think  I'll  come  any  farther,"  he  said. 
"The  Glambecks  will  be  wondering  what  has  become 
of  me.  Glambeck  brought  me  down  for  a  couple  of 
nights,  and  I  can't  be  not  there  all  the  time." 

"But  you  wanted  to  see  Kokensee " 

"Doesn't  anybody  ever  read  in  Kokensee?" 

"Read?" 

"Papers?  Books?  Reviews?  Criticisms?  What  the 
world's  doing  in  all  the  million  places  that  aren't 
Kokensee?  Who  everybody  is?  What's  being  thought 
and  created?" 

He  had  an  oddly  nettled  look. 

"Robert takes  in  the  Norddeutscheallgemeinezeitung, 
and  I've  been  reading  Kipling " 

"Kipling!     Well,  good-bye." 

"But  isn't  Kipling — why,  till  I  married  I  had  only  the 
Litany." 

"What  on  earth  for?" 

"That  and  Psalms  and  things.  I  felt  very  empty  on 
the  Litany." 

"I  can  imagine  it.  I'd  lose  no  more  time  then  in 
furnishing  my  emptiness.     Good-bye." 

"Oh,  don't  go — wait  a  moment.  It's  such  ages  since 
I've Furnishing  it  how?      What  ought  I ?" 

"Read,  read,  read — everything  you  can  lay  your 
hands  on." 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  265 

"But  there  isn't  anything  to  lay  hands  on." 

"My  dear  lady,  haven't  you  postcards?  Write  to 
London  and  order  the  reviews  to  be  sent  out  to  you. 
Get  some  notion  of  people  and  ideas.    Good-bye." 

"Oh — but  won't  you  really  come  and  look  at  Ko- 
kensee?" 

"It's  a  dark  place.  I'm  afraid  what  I'd  see  there 
would  be  nothing." 

"There'll  be  more  light  to-morrow " 

"I'm  going  south  again  to-morrow  with  Glambeck. 
I  only  came  for  a  day.  I  was  curious  about  provincial 
German  interiors.     Good-bye." 

"Oh,  but  do " 

"My  advice  is  very  sound,  you  know.  One  can't 
shut  one's  eyes  and  just  sleep  while  the  procession  of 
men  and  women  who  are  making  the  world  goes  past 
one,  unless" — his  eyes  glanced  over  the  want  of  trim- 
ness  of  her  figure,  the  untidy  way  her  loose  coat  was 
fastened — "unless  one  doesn't  mind  running  to  seed." 

"But  I  do  mind,"  cried  Ingeborg.  "It's  the  last 
thing  I  want  to  run  to ' 

"Then  don't.     Good-bye." 

He  took  off  his  hat  and  was  already  several  steps 
away  from  her  by  the  time  it  was  on  his  head  again. 
Then  he  turned  round  and  called  out  to  the  dejected 
little  figure  standing  where  he  had  left  it  in  the  sandy 
road  with  the  grey  curtain  of  mist  blurring  it:  "It 
really  is  everybody's  duty  to  know  at  least  something 
of  what's  being  done  in  the  world." 

And  he  jerked  away  into  the  dusk  towards  Glambeck. 

She  stood  a  long  while  looking  at  the  place  where 
the  gloom  had  blotted  him  out.  Wonderful  to  have 
met  somebody  who  really  talked  to  one,  who  actually 
told  one  what  to  do.     She  went  home  making  impul- 


266  THE  PASTORS  WIFE 

sive  resolutions,  suddenly  brave  again,  her  chin  in  the 
air.  Ill  or  not  ill  she  was  not  going  to  be  beaten,  she 
was  not  going  to  wait  another  day  before  beginning  to 
fill  her  stupid  mind.  It  was  monstrous  she  should 
be  so  ignorant,  so  uneducated.  What  was  she  made 
of,  then,  what  poor  cheap  stuff,  that  she  could  think 
of  nothing  better  than  to  cry  because  she  did  not  feel 
as  well  as  she  used  to?  Weren't  there  heaps  of  things 
to  do  even  when  one  was  ill?  Had  she  not  herself 
heard  of  sick  people  whose  minds  triumphed  so  entirely 
over  their  prostrate  flesh  that  from  really  quite  per- 
petual beds  they  shed  brightness  on  whole  parishes? 

She  wrote  that  night  to  Mudie  demanding  catalogues 
of  him  almost  with  fierceness,  and  ordered  as  a  beginning 
the  Spectator  and  Hibbert  Journal,  both  of  which  at 
Redchester  had  been  mentioned  in  her  presence  by 
prebendaries.  When  they  arrived  she  read  them  la- 
boriously from  cover  to  cover,  and  then  ordered  all 
the  monthly  reviews  they  advertised.  She  subscribed 
at  once  to  the  Times  and  to  a  weekly  paper  called  the 
Clarion  because  it  was  alluded  to  in  one  of  the  reviews; 
she  showered  postcards  on  Mudie,  for  whatever  books 
she  read  about  she  immediately  bought,  deciding  that 
that  was  as  good  a  way  of  starting  as  any  other;  and 
she  had  not  been  reading  papers  a  week  before  she  came 
across  Edward  Ingram's  name. 

A  great  light  dawned  on  her.      "Oh "  she  said 

with  a  little  catch  of  the  breath,  turning  hot;  and 
became  aware  that  she  had  just  been  having  the  most 
recognisably  interesting  encounter  of  her  life. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

IN  SEVEN  years  Ingeborg  had  six  children.  She 
completely  realised  during  that  period  the  Psalmist's 
ideal  of  a  reward  for  a  good  man  and  was  altogether 
the  fruitful  vine  about  the  walls  of  his  house.  She  was 
uninterruptedly  fruitful.  She  rambled  richly.  She  saw 
herself,  at  first  with  an  astonished  chagrin  and  afterwards 
with  resignation,  swarming  up  to  the  eaves  of  her  little 
home,  pauseless,  gapless, luxuriantly  threatening,to choke 
the  very  chimneys.  At  the  beginning  she  deplored  this 
uninterrupted  abundance,  for  she  could  not  but  see  that 
beneath  it  the  family  roof  grew  a  little  rotten  and  some- 
times, though  she  made  feeble  efforts  to  keep  it  out,  a 
rather  dismal  rain  of  discomfort  soaked  in  and  dimmed 
the  brightness  of  things.  Good  servants  would  not  come 
to  such  a  teeming  household.  The  children  that  were 
there  suffered  because  of  the  children  that  were  soon  go- 
ing to  be  there.  It  was  a  pity,  she  thought,  thai  when 
one  produced  a  new  child  one  could  not  simultaneously 
produce  a  new  mother  for  it,  so  that  it  should  be  as 
well  looked  after  as  one's  first  child  had  been.  She 
could  mend  their  stockings,  because  thai  could  be  done 
lying  on  a  sofa,  but  she  was  never  sure  about  anything 
else  that  concerned  them.  And  there  were  so  many 
things,  such  endless  vital  things  to  be  seen  to  if  babies 
were  to  flourish.  And  when  the  first  ones  grew  bigger 
and  she  might  have  begun  those  intimate  expeditions 
and    communions    with    them    she    used    to    plan,    she 

207 


268  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

found  that,  too,  was  impossible,  for  she  was  so  deeply 
engaged  in  providing  them  with  more  brothers  and  sis- 
ters that  she  was  unable  to  move. 

The  days  between  her  first  and  second  child  were 
the  best.  She  was  still  strong  enough  to  tub  Robertlet 
every  night  and  prepare  his  food,  and  keep  a  watchful 
eye  on  him  most  of  the  time;  also,  he  was  only  one, 
and  easy  to  deal  with.  And  he  was  so  exact  and  punc- 
tual in  his  ways  that  he  seemed  like  a  clock  you  wound 
up  at  regular  intervals  and  knew  would  then  go  on  by 
itself;  and  his  clothes,  naturally,  were  all  new  and 
needed  little  mending;  and  she  still  had  Use,  who  did 
not  marry  till  a  year  later;  and  she  had  persuaded 
herself,  for  one  must  needs  persuade  oneself  of  some- 
thing, that  after  this  next  baby  there  would  be  a  pause. 

This  persuasion,  and  the  few  admonishments  Edward 
Ingram  had  thrown  at  her  that  afternoon,  helped  her 
extraordinarily.  So  easily  could  she  be  stirred  to 
courage  and  enthusiasm  that  she  was  able  to  forget 
most  of  her  fears  and  discomforts  in  the  new  business 
of  training  her  mind  to  triumph  over  her  body,  and 
she  got  through  a  surprising  quantity  of  mixed  reading 
that  winter  and  spring;  and  when  at  last  in  the  follow- 
ing May  her  hour  had  come,  she  marched  off  almost 
recklessly  with  her  two  plaits  already  hanging  down  her 
back  and  her  head  held  high  and  her  eyes  wide  and 
shining  to  the  fatal  bedroom  where  Death  she  supposed, 
but  refused  to  care,  sat  waiting  to  see  if  he  could  not  get 
her  this  time,  so  filled  was  she  with  the  spirit  she  had 
been  cultivating  for  six  months  of  proud  determination 
not  to  be  beaten. 

She  was,  however,  beaten. 

It  was  the  absence  of  pauses  that  beat  her.  She 
came  to  be,  as  the  German  phrase  put  it,  in  a  continual 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  269 

condition  of  being  blest.  She  came  to  be  also  continu- 
ally more  bloodless.  Gradually  sinking  away  more  and 
more  from  energy  as  one  child  after  the  other  sapped 
her  up,  she  left  off  reading,  dropping  the  more  difficult 
things  first.  The  Hibbert  Journal  went  almost  at  once. 
Soon  the  Times  was  looked  at  languidly  and  not  opened. 
The  National  Review  gave  her  an  earache.  Presently 
she  was  too  far  gone  even  for  the  Spectator.  The 
Clarion  lasted  longest,  but  a  growing  distaste  for  its 
tone  caused  it  finally  to  be  abandoned.  For  she  was 
becoming  definitely  religious;  she  was  ceasing  to  criticise 
or  to  ask  Why?  She  would  sit  for  hours  contemplating 
the  beauty  of  acquiescence.  It  gave  her  a  boneless 
satisfaction.  The  more  anaemic  she  grew  the  easier 
religion  seemed  to  be.  It  was  much  the  least  difficult 
thing  to  be  passive,  to  yield,  not  to  think,  not  to  de- 
cide, never  to  want  explanations.  And  everybody 
praised  her.  How  nice  that  was !  Baroness  Glambeck 
approved,  Frau  Dosch  approved  loudly.  The  elder  Frau 
Dremmel  came  out  each  year  twice  and  silently  ap- 
proved of  a  mother  whose  offspring  was  so  strikingly 
like  herself;  while  as  for  Kokensee,  it  regarded  her 
with  the  respect  due  to  a  person  becoming  proverbial. 
It  is  true  Robert  seemed  to  love  her  rather  less  than 
more,  in  spite  of  her  obviously  deserving  to  be  loved 
more  than  ever  now  that  she  was  at  one  with  him 
about  Providence;  yet  it  was  hardly  fair  to  say  that, 
either,  for  nobodv  could  be  kinder  than  he  was  when 
he  was  not  busy.  He  was  busy  from  morning  to  night. 
How  nice  that  was,  she  thought,  her  hands  folded;  she 
had  alwavs  thought  it  nice  to  be  busy. 

Of  her  six  children  Robert  let  flourished,  and  so  did 
the  sister  who  came  alter  him.  The  next  two  died, 
one  doing  it  boldly  of  mumps,  a  thing  that  had  never 


270  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

been  achieved  before  and  greatly  interested  the  doctor, 
who  predicted  a  memorable  future  for  him  if  he  had 
been  going  to  have  one,  and  the  other,  more  explicably, 
by  falling  out  of  the  punt  when  his  very  existence 
depended  on  his  keeping  in  it.  Then  they  took  to 
being  born  dead;  two  of  them  in  succession  did  this; 
and  it  was  after  the  second  had  done  it  that  Ingeborg 
reached  her  lowest  ebb  of  vitality  and  could  hardly  be 
got  to  say  a  sentence  that  did  not  include  heaven. 

When  she  had  been  up  and  dressed  two  months  and 
still  lay  about  on  sofas  being  religious,  Herr  Dremmel, 
who  was  patient  but  slowly  becoming  conscious  that 
there  was  an  atmosphere  of  chapelle  ardente  about  his 
parlour  on  his  coming  into  it  with  the  innocent  brisk- 
ness of  a  good  man  to  his  supper,  thought  perhaps 
the  Meuk  doctor,  who  by  now  was  a  familiar  feature 
in  his  life,  had  better  come  over  and  advise;  and  so  it 
was  that  Ingeborg  went  to  Zoppot,  that  bracing  and 
beautiful  seaside  resort  near  Danzig,  leaving  her  home 
for  the  first  time  since  her  marriage,  going  indeed  with 
as  much  unwillingness  as  so  will-less  a  person  could 
possess,  but  sent  off  regardless  of  her  moist  opposition 
by  the  doctor,  who  would  not  even  allow  her  to  take 
Robertlet  and  Ditti  with  her. 

She  went  in  the  care  of  the  nurse  who  had  helped 
her  after  Robertlet's  birth,  and  she  was  to  stay  there 
all  June  and  all  July,  and  all  August  and  September 
as  well  if  necessary. 

"But  what  will  they  do  without  me?"  she  kept  on 
feebly  asking.  "And  my  duties — how  can  I  leave 
everything?" 

Tears  poured  down  her  face  at  her  departure.  She 
gave  keepsakes  to  both  the  servants.  She  sent  for 
the  sexton,  with  whom  she  had  latterly  grown  friendly, 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  271 

and  tried  to  speak  but  could  not.  She  folded  the 
impassive  Robertlet  and  Ditti  to  her  heart  so  many 
times  that  they  were  stirred  to  something  almost  ap- 
proaching activity  and  resistance. 

"Your  prayers — you  won't  forget  what  Mummy 
taught  you?"  she  wept,  as  though  she  were  taking 
leave  of  them  for  ever. 

"Dear  Robert,"  she  sobbed,  clinging  to  him  with 
her  cheek  against  his  on  the  platform  at  Meuk  where 
he  saw  her  off,  "do  forgive  me  if  I've  been  a  bad  wife 
to  you.  I  have  tried.  You  won't  forget — will  you — 
ever — that  I  did  try?" 

The  nurse  gave  her  a  spoonful  of  Brand's  Meat 
Jelly.  The  journey  was  a  journey  of  jelly  combating 
grief.  All  the  way  each  relapse  into  woe  was  instantly 
interrupted  by  jelly;  and  it  was  not  till  the  evening, 
when  they  reached  the  little  pension  on  the  sands  which 
was  to  be  their  home  for  two  months,  and  Ingeborg 
going  to  the  open  window  gave  a  quick  cry  as  the  full 
freshness  and  saltness  and  heaving  glancing  beauty 
burst  upon  her,  that  the  nurse  threw  the  rest  of  the 
tin  away  and  put  her  trust  altogether  in  the  sea. 

Herr  Dremmel  returned  to  his  wifeless  home  in  a 
meditative  frame  of  mind.  As  he  jolted  along  in  the 
same  carriage,  only  grown  more  shaky,  in  which  he  had 
brought  his  bride  back  seven  years  before,  he  indulged, 
first,  in  a  brief  wonder  at  the  ups  and  downs  of  women; 
from  this  he  passed  to  a  consideration  of  the  superior 
reliability  of  chemicals;  from  this,  again,  he  proceeded 
to  reflect  that,  nevertheless,  a  man's  life  should  be  dec- 
orated at  the  edges,  and  that  the  most  satisfactory 
decoration  was  a  wife  and  family.  Ingeborg,  in  spite 
of  her  ups  and  downs,  had  been  a  good  wife  to  him, 
and  he  did  not  regret  having  attached  her  to  his  edges, 


272  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

but  then  he  also  had  done  his  part  and  been  a  good 
husband  to  her.     Few  marriages,   he  thought,   could 
have  been  so  harmonious  and  successful  as  theirs.     He 
loved  her  as  an  honest  man  should  love  his  wife — at 
judicious  intervals.     Always  he  had  affection  for  her, 
and  liked  being  with  her  when  she  was  feeling  well. 
Her    money — every    wife    should    have    a    little — had 
helped  him  much,  indeed  had  made  most  of  the  suc- 
cesses that  had  rewarded  his  labours  possible,  and  she 
had  given  him  a  child  a  year,  which  was,  he  was  aware, 
the  maximum  output  and  rendered  him  civically  satis- 
factory.    That   these   children   should,   four  of  them, 
not  have  succeeded  in  staying  alive,  and  that  the  two 
who  had  should  bear  so  striking  a  resemblance  to  his 
mother,  a  person  he  knew  for  unintelligent,  were  mis- 
fortunes, but  one  did  not  dwell  on  misfortunes;  one 
turned  one's  back  on  them  and  went  away  and  worked. 
The  central  fact  of  life,  its  core  of  splendour,  he  said 
to  himself  as,  arrived  at  home,  he  hung  up  his  hat  in 
the  passage  and  prepared  to  plunge  with  renewed  appe- 
tite into  his  laboratory,  was  work;  but,  he  added  as 
he  passed  the  open  door  of  the  sitting-room,  and  was 
reminded  by  its  untidiness  of  domesticities,  since  one 
had  to  withdraw  occasionally  from  the  heat  of  that 
great  middle  light  and   refresh  oneself  in  something 
cooler,   one   needed   a   place  of  relaxation   where  the 
interest  was  more  attenuated,  a  ring  of  relative  tepidity 
round  the  bright  centre  of  one's  life,  and  this  ring  was 
excellently  supplied  by  the  object  commonly  called  the 
family  circle.     The  harder  he  worked,  the  more  hotly  he 
pursued  knowledge,  the  more  urgent  was  a  man's  need 
for  intervals  of  tepidity.     One  sought  out  one's  little 
wife  and  rested  one's  brain;  one  took  one's  son  on  one's 
knee;  one  pulled,  perhaps,  the  plait  of  one's  daughter. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  273 

Life  for  Herr  Dremmel  was  both  great  and  simple. 
During  the  seven  years  of  his  marriage  it  had  become 
continually  more  so.  There  were  times  he  could  re- 
member previous  to  that  event  when  he  had  lost  sight 
of  this  truth  in  a  confused  hankering,  periods  during 
which  he  had  hankered  persistently,  moments  that 
astonished  him  afterwards  to  call  to  mind  when,  the 
lilacs  being  out  in  the  garden  and  the  young  corn  of 
the  fields  asprout  in  the  warm  spring  sun,  his  labora- 
tory, that  place  of  hopes  and  visions,  had  incredibly 
appeared  to  him  to  be  mere  bones.  Marriage  had 
banished  these  distortions  of  perception,  and  he  had 
lived  seven  years  in  the  full  magnificent  consciousness 
of  the  greatness  and  simplicity  of  life.  He  was  ar- 
moured by  his  singleness  of  purpose.  He  never  came 
out  of  his  armour  and  was  petty.  Not  once,  while 
Ingeborg  in  a  distant  corner  of  the  house  was  fearing 
that  she  had  hurt  him,  or  offended  him,  or  had  made 
him  think  she  did  not  love  him,  had  he  been  hurt  or 
offended  or  thinking  anything  of  the  sort.  He  was 
absorbed  in  great  things,  great  interests,  great  values. 
There  was  no  room  in  his  thoughts  for  meditations  on 
minor  concerns.  The  days  were  not  wide  enough  for 
the  bigness  they  had  to  hold,  and  it  never  would  have 
occurred  to  him  to  devote  any  portion  of  their  already 
limited  space  to  inquiring  if  he  had  been  hurt.  His 
interested  eyes,  carefully  examining  and  comparing  and 
criticising  phenomena,  had  no  time  for  introspection. 
As  the  years  passed  and  successes  followed  upon  his 
patience,  his  absorption  and  subjugation  by  his  work 
became  increasingly  profound;  for  a  man  lias  but  a 
handful  of  years,  and  cannot  during  thai  brief  span 
live  too  inquisitively.  Herr  Dremmel  was  wringing 
more  out  of  Nature,  who  only  asks  to  be  forced  to  tell, 


274  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

each  year.  He  was  accumulating  experiences  and 
knowledge  of  an  interest  and  value  so  great  that  every- 
thing else  was  trivial  beside  them.  The  passing  day 
was  forgotten  in  the  interest  of  the  day  that  was  to 
come.  The  future  was  what  his  brain  was  perpetually 
concerned  with,  and  an  eye  ranging  with  growing  keen- 
ness over  a  growingly  splendid  and  detailed  vision 
cannot  observe,  it  would  be  an  interruption,  a  waste  to 
observe,  the  fluctuations  in  the  moods  of,  for  instance, 
a  family  or  a  parish. 

Wives,  children,  and  parishes  are  adornments,  obli- 
gations, and  means  of  livelihood.  They  are  what  a 
man  has  as  well,  but  only  as  well.  Herr  Dremmel 
during  these  years  had  trained  his  parish  to  be  un- 
obtrusive in  return  for  his  own  unobtrusiveness,  and  in 
spite  of  occasional  restiveness  on  the  part  of  Baron 
Glambeck,  who  continued  from  time  to  time,  on  the 
ground  that  the  parish  was  becoming  heathen  and  dis- 
playing the  smug  contentment  characteristic  of  that 
condition,  to  endeavour  to  persuade  the  authorities  to 
remove  him  somewhere  else,  was  more  firmly  established 
than  ever  in  the  heart  of  a  flock  that  only  wanted  to  be 
left  alone;  and  as  for  his  wife  and  children,  he  regarded 
them  benevolently  as  the  necessary  foundation  of  his 
existence,  the  airy  cellars  that  kept  the  fabric  above 
sweet  and  dry.  Like  cellars,  one  had  to  have  them, 
and  one  was  glad  when  they  were  good,  but  one  did 
not  live  in  them.  As  a  wise  man  who  wished  to  do 
fine  work  before  being  overtaken  by  the  incapacitations 
of  death,  he  had  contrived  his  life  so  that  it  should 
contain  enough  love  to  make  him  able  to  forget  love. 
It  is  not,  he  had  come  to  know  very  well  since  his 
marriage,  by  doing  without  but  by  having  that  one  can 
clear  one's  mind  of  wanting;  and  it  is  only  the  cleared 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  275 

mind  that  can  achieve  anything  at  all  in  the  great  work 
of  helping  the  world  to  move  more  quickly  on  its  journey 
towards  the  light. 

For  some  weeks  after  Ingeborg's  departure  he  was 
immensely  unaware  of  her  absence.  It  was  June,  that 
crowded  month  for  him  who  has  experimental  fields; 
and  small  discomforts  at  home,  such  as  ill-served, 
unpunctual  meals  and  rooms  growing  steadily  less 
dusted,  at  no  time  attracted  his  notice.  He  would 
come  out  of  his  laboratory  after  a  good  morning's  work 
in  much  the  same  spirit  with  which  the  bridegroom 
issuing  from  his  chamber,  a  person  details  cannot  touch, 
is  filled,  and  would  eat  contentedly  any  food  he  found 
lying  about  and  be  off  to  his  fields  almost  before  Robert- 
let  and  Ditti  had  done  struggling  with  their  bibs  and 
saying  their  preliminary  grace. 

The  children,  however,  took  no  base  advantage  of 
this  being  left  to  themselves.  Robertlet  did  not  turn 
on  Ditti  and  seize  her  dinner  because  she  was  a  girl; 
Ditti  did  not  conceal  more  than  her  share  of  pudding 
in  her  pocket  for  comfort  during  the  empty  afternoon 
hours.  They  sat  in  silence  working  through  the  meal, 
using  their  knives  to  eat  with  instead  of  their  forks,  for 
knives  rather  than  forks  were  in  their  blood,  and  un- 
moved by  the  way  in  which  bits  they  had  carefully 
stalked  round  and  round  their  plates  ended  by  tumbling 
over  the  edge  on  to  the  tablecloth.  They  were  patient 
children,  and  when  that  happened  they  made  no  com- 
ment, but  dropping  their  knives  also  on  the  tablecloth 
picked  up  the  bits  in  their  fingers  and  ate  them.  At 
the  end  Ditti  said  the  closing  grace  as  her  mother  had 
taught  her,  Robertlet  having  officiated  at  the  opening 
one,  and  they  both  stood  behind  their  chairs  with  their 
eyes  shut  while  she  expressed  gratitude  in  German  to 


276  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

the  dear  Saviour  who  had  had  the  friendliness  to  be 
their  guest  on  that  occasion,  and  having  reached  the 
Amen,  in  which  Robertlet  joined,  they  did  not  fall 
upon  each  other  and  fight,  as  other  unshepherded 
children  filled  with  meat  and  pudding  might  have  done, 
but  left  the  room  in  a  sober  file  and  went  to  the  kitchen 
and  requested  the  servant  Rosa,  who  was  the  one  who 
would  have  been  their  nurse  if  they  had  had  one,  to 
accompany  them  to  their  bedroom  and  see  that  they 
cleaned  their  teeth. 

They  spent  the  afternoons  in  not  being  naughty. 

Herr  Dremmel,  accordingly,  because  of  this  health 
and  sobriety  in  his  children  and  his  own  indifference  to 
his  comfort,  had  no  domestic  worries  such  as  engulf 
other  men  whose  wives  are  away  to  disturb  him,  and  it 
was  not  till  July  was  drawing  to  a  close  and  a  long 
drought  forced  leisure  upon  him  that  Ingeborg's  image 
began  to  obtrude  itself  through  the  chinks  of  his  work. 

At  first  he  thought  of  her  as  a  mother,  as  somebody 
heavy,  continually  recovering  from  or  preparing  for 
illness;  but  presently  he  began  to  think  of  her  as  a 
wife,  as  his  wife,  as  his  proper  complement  and  relaxa- 
tion from  all  this  toil  shut  up  in  a  dull  laboratory. 
She  seemed  to  grow  brighter  and  lighter  thought  of  like 
that,  and  by  the  time  he  received  a  letter  asking  if  she 
might  stay  away  another  fortnight  to  complete  what 
was  being  a  thorough  cure  she  was  so  brightly  in  his 
mind  that  he  felt  extremely  disappointed. 

He  wrote  giving  the  permission  she  asked,  and  made 
the  discovery  that  his  house  looked  empty  and  that  a 
fortnight  was  long.  He  paced  the  garden  in  the  hot 
evenings,  smoking  beneath  the  lime-trees  where  he  and 
she  at  the  beginning  used  so  gaily  to  breakfast,  and 
forgot  how  slow  of  movement  and  mind  she  had  been 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  277 

for  several  years,  how  little  he  had  really  seen  of  her, 
how  more  and  more  his  attitude  towards  her  had  been 
one  of  patience;  and  when  he  went  in  to  his  supper, 
which  he  suddenly  did  not  like  and  criticised,  what  he 
found  himself  looking  for  was  not  the  figure  he  had 
been  used  to  find  lying  silent  on  the  sofa,  but  the  quick, 
light,  flitting  thing  that  laughed  and  pulled  his  ears,  the 
Ingeborg  of  the  beginning,  his  little  sheep. 

On  the  day  she  came  home,  although  it  was  the 
very  height  of  harvesting  and  the  first  samples  of  the 
year's  grain  lay  on  his  table  waiting  to  be  examined,  he 
gave  up  the  afternoon  to  driving  in  to  Meuk  to  meet 
her,  and  waited  on  the  platform  with  an  impatient  ex- 
pectancy he  had  not  felt  for  years. 

;'It  is  not  good  for  man  to  live  alone,"  were  his  first 
words  as  he  embraced  her  largely  in  the  door  of  the 
railway  carriage,  while  the  porter,  in  a  fever  to  get  out 
the  hand  luggage  and  run  and  attend  to  other  passengers, 
had  to  wait  till  he  had  done.  "Little  sheep,  how  could 
you  stay  away  so  long  from  the  old  shepherd? ' 

She  was  looking  very  well,  he  thought — sunburnt 
and  with  many  new  freckles,  rounder,  quite  young,  a 
sweet  little  wife  for  a  long  solitarv  husband  to  have  com- 
ing  home  to  him. 

He  lifted  her  proudly  into  the  carriage  and  drove 
through  Meuk  with  his  arm  round  her,  waving  the 
other  one  at  the  doctor  who  rallied  past  them  in  his 
own  high  shaky  vehicle  and  shouting,  "Cured!" 

The  doctor,  however,  seemed  surprised  at  seeing 
Ingeborg,  and  did  not  smile  back  but  looked  inscru- 
tably at  them  both. 

She  asked  about  the  welfare  of  the  children,  and 
whether  their  ears  had  been  properly  washed. 

"Ears?"    exclaimed    Herr    Dremmel.     "And    what, 


278  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

pray,  have  the  ears  of  others  to  do  with  a  reunited 
wedded  couple?" 

She  hoped,  a  little  hurriedly,  that  Rosa  and  the  cook 
had  been  good  to  him. 

"Rosa  and  the  cook?"  he  cried.  'What  talk  is 
this  of  Rosa  and  the  cook?  If  you  are  not  silent  with 
your  domesticities  I  will  kiss  you  here  and  now  in  the 
middle  of  the  open  highroad." 

She  said  she  had  never  really  thanked  him  for  letting 
her  go  to  Zoppot  and  be  there  so  long. 

"Too  long,  Little  One,"  he  interrupted,  drawing  her 
closer.  "Almost  had  I  forgotten  what  a  dear  little  wife 
I  possess." 

"But  I'm  going  to  make  up  for  it  all  now,"  she  said, 
"and  work  harder  than  I've  ever  done  in  my  life." 

"At  making  the  good  Robert  happy,"  he  said,  pinch- 
ing her  ear. 

"And  doing  things  for  the  children.  Dreadful  to  think 
of  them  all  this  time  without  me.     Were  they  good?'" 

"Good  as  fishes." 

"Robert— fishes?" 

"They  are  well,  Little  One,  and  happy.  That  is 
enough  about  the  children.  Tell  me  rather  about  you, 
how  you  filled  up  your  days." 

"I  walked,  I  sailed,  I  bathed,  I  lay  in  the  sun,  and 
I  made  resolutions." 

"Excellent.     I  shall  await  the  result  with  interest." 

"I  hope  you'll  like  them.  I  know  they'll  be  very 
good  for  the  children." 

She  had  so  earnest  a  face  that  he  pulled  it  round 
by  the  chin  and  peered  at  it.  Seen  close  she  was  al- 
ways prettiest,  full  of  delicacy  and  charm  of  soft  fair 
skin,  and  after  examining  her  a  moment  with  a  pleased 
smile  he  stooped  down  and  did,  after  all,  kiss  her. 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  279 

She  flushed  and  resisted. 

"What?"  he  said,  amused.  'The  little  wife  grow- 
ing virginal  again?" 

"You've  made  my  hat  crooked,"  she  said,  putting 
up  her  hands  to  straighten  it.  "Robert,  how  are  the 
fields?" 

"I  will  not  talk  about  the  fields.  I  will  talk  about 
you." 

"Oh,  Robert.  You  know,"  she  added  nervously, 
"I'm  not  really  well  yet.  I've  still  got  to  go  on  taking 
tiresome  things — that  tonic,  you  know.  The  doctor 
there  said  I'm  still  anaemic " 

"We  will  feed  her  on  portions  of  the  strongest  ox." 

"So  you  mustn't  mind,  if  I — if  I " 

"I  mind  nothing  if  only  I  once  more  have  my  little 
wife  at  home,"  said  Herr  Dremmel;  and  when  he  helped 
her  down  on  to  the  parsonage  steps,  where  stood  Robert- 
let  and  Ditti  in  a  stiff  and  proper  row  waiting  motion- 
less till  their  mother  should  have  got  near  enough 
for  them  to  present  her  with  the  nosegays  they  were 
holding,  he  kissed  her  again,  and  again  pinched  her 
ear,  and  praised  God  aloud  that  his  widowerhood  was 
over. 

They  had  tea,  a  meal  that  had  long  before  been 
substituted  for  the  heavier  refreshment  of  coffee,  in  a 
parlour  filled  with  flowers  by  Rosa  and  the  cook,  the 
very  cake,  baked  for  the  occasion,  being  strewn  with 
them.  Herr  Dremmel  lounged  on  the  sofa  behind  the 
table  looking  placidly  content,  with  one  arm  round  his 
wife,  while  Robertlet  and  Ditti,  awed  by  the  splendours 
of  the  decorations  for  their  mother's  home-coming  and 
their  own  best  clothes  and  spotless  bibs,  sat  opposite, 
being  more  completely  good  than  ever.  From  their 
side  of  the  table  they  stared  unflinchingly  at  the  two 


280  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

people  on  the  sofa — at  their  comfortably  reclining, 
pleased-looking  father,  whom  they  knew  so  differently 
as  a  being  always  hurriedly  going  somewhere  else,  at 
their  mother  sitting  up  very  straight,  with  her  veil 
pushed  up  over  her  nose,  pouring  out  tea  and  smiling 
at  them  and  keeping  on  giving  them  more  jam  and 
more  milk  and  more  cake  even  after,  aware  from  their 
sensations  that  overflowing  could  not  be  far  off,  they 
had  informed  her  by  anxious  repetitions  of  the  word 
satt,  which  she  did  not  seem  to  hear,  that  they  were 
already  in  a  dangerous  condition.  And  they  wondered 
dimly  why,  when  she  poured  out  the  tea,  her  hand 
shook  and  made  it  spill. 

"I  will  now,"  said  Herr  Dremmel  when  the  meal 
was  finished,  getting  up  and  brushing  crumbs  out  of 
the  many  folds  that  were  characteristic  of  his  clothes, 
"retire  for  a  space  into  my  laboratory." 

He  looked  at  Ingeborg  and  smiled.  "Picture  it," 
he  said.  'The  only  solace  I  have  now  had  for  two 
months  and  a  half  has  been  in  the  bony  arms  of  my 
laboratory.  I  grow  weary  of  them.  It  is  well  to  have 
one's  little  wife  home  again.  A  man,  to  do  his  work, 
needs  his  life  complete,  equipped  in  each  of  its  direc- 
tions. His  laboratory  seems  bony  to  him  if  he  has  not 
also  a  wife;  his  wife  would  seem  not  bony  enough  if  he 
had  not  also  a  laboratory.  Bony  and  boneless,  bony 
and  boneless — it  is  the  swing  of  the  pendulum  of  the 
wise  man's  life."  And  he  bent  over  her  and  lifted  her 
face  up  again  by  putting  his  finger  under  her  chin.  "Is 
it  not  so,  Little  One?"  he  asked,  smiling. 

"I — suppose  so,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"Suppose  so!" 

He  laughed,  and  pulled  an  escaping  tendril  of  her 
hair,  and  went  away  in  great  contentment  and  immersed 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  281 

himself  very  happily  in  the  saucers  of  new  grain  waiting 
to  be  weighed  and  counted. 

It  was  a  fine  August  afternoon,  and  his  windows 
were  open,  for  there  was  no  wind  to  blow  his  papers 
about,  and  he  was  pleased  when  he  presently  became 
aware  out  of  the  corner  of  an  eye  withdrawn  an  instant 
from  its  work  that  his  wife  had  come  out  on  to  the 
path  below  and  was  walking  up  and  down  it  in  the  way 
she  used  to  before  the  acuter  period  of  the  sofa  and  the 
interest  in  life  beyond  the  grave  had  set  in. 

He  liked  to  see  her  there.  There  was  a  grass  bank 
sloping  up  from  the  path  to  beneath  his  windows,  and 
by  standing  on  tip-toe  on  the  top  of  this  and  stretching 
up  an  arm  as  far  as  it  would  go  one  was  just  able  to  tap 
against  the  glass.  He  remembered  how  she  used  to  do 
this  when  first  they  were  married,  on  very  fine  days, 
to  try  to  lure  him  out  from  his  duties  into  dalliance 
with  her  among  the  lilacs.  It  amused  him  to  find  him- 
self almost  inclined  to  hope  she  would  do  it  now,  for  it 
was  long  since  there  had  been  dalliance  and  he  felt  this 
was  an  occasion,  this  restoration  to  normality,  on  which 
some  slight  trifling  in  a  garden  would  not  be  inappro- 
priate. 

But  Ingeborg,  though  she  loitered  there  nearly  half 
an  hour,  did  not  even  look  up.  She  wandered  up  and 
down  in  the  cool  shade  the  house  threw  across  the  path 
in  the  afternoon,  her  hat  off,  apparently  merely  enjoying 
the  beauty  of  a  summer  day  bending  towards  its  even- 
ing, and  presently  he  forgot  her  in  the  vivid  interest  of 
what  he  was  doing;  so  that  it  was  the  surprised  expres- 
sion of  some  one  who  has  forgotten  and  is  trying  to  re- 
call that  he  looked  at  her  when,  after  a  knock  at  the 
door  which  he  had  not  heard,  he  saw  her  come  in  and 
stand  at  the  corner  of  his  table  waiting  till  he  had  done 


282  THE  PASTORS  WIFE 

counting — a  process  he  conducted  aloud — to  the  end 
of  the  row  of  grains  he  was  engaged  upon. 

His  thoughts  were  still  chiefly  with  them  as  he  looked 
up  at  her  when  he  had  done  and  had  written  down  the 
result,  but  there  was  room  in  them  also  for  a  slight  won- 
der that  she  should  be  there.  She  had  not  penetrated 
into  his  laboratory  for  years.  She  had  been  tamed, 
after  a  period  of  recurring  insurrections,  into  respect  for 
its  sanctity.  But  he  did  not  mind  being  interrupted  on 
this  occasion;  on  the  contrary,  as  soon  as  he  had  fully 
returned  to  consciousness  he  was  pleased.  There  was  a 
large  warmth  pervading  Herr  Dremmel  that  afternoon 
which  made  him  inclined  not  to  mind  anything.  '  Well, 
Little  One?"  he  said. 

Immediately  she  began  to  deliver  what  sounded  like 
a  speech.  He  gazed  at  her  in  astonishment.  She  ap- 
peared to  be  in  a  condition  of  extreme  excitement;  she 
was  addressing  him  rapidly  in  a  trembling  voice;  she  was 
much  flushed,  and  was  holding  on  to  the  edge  of  the 
table.  It  was  so  sudden  and  so  headlong  that  it  was 
like  nothing  so  much  as  the  gushing  forth  of  the 
long  corked-up  contents  of  an  over-full  bottle,  and  he 
gazed  at  her  in  an  astonishment  that  did  not  for  some 
time  permit  him  to  gather  the  drift  of  what  she  was 
saying. 

When  he  did  she  had  already  got  to  the  word  Ruins. 

"Ruins?"  repeated  Herr  Dremmel. 

"Ruins,  ruins.  It  must  stop — it  can't  go  on.  Oh,  I 
saw  it  so  clearly  the  last  part  of  the  time  in  Zoppot.  I 
suppose  it  was  the  sea  wind  blew  me  clear.  Our  exist- 
ence, Robert,  our  decently  happy  existence  in  a  decently 
happy  home  with  properly  cared-for  children " 

"But,"  interrupted  Herr  Dremmel,  raising  his  hand, 
"one  moment — what  is  it  that  must  stop?" 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  283 

"Oh,  don't  you  see  all  that  will  be  in  ruins  about 
us — but  in  ruins,  Robert — all  our  happy  life — if  I  go 
on  in  this — in  this  wild  career  of— of  unbridled  mother- 
hood?" 

Herr  Dremmel  stared.  ;'  Unbridled  -  ?  "  he  began ; 
then  he  repeated,  so  deep  was  his  astonishment,  "Wild 
career  of — Ingeborg,  did  you  say  unbridled  mother- 
hood?" 

'Yes,"  said  Ingeborg,  pressing  her  hands  together, 
evidently  extraordinarily  agitated.  "I  learned  that  by 
heart  at  Zoppot,  on  purpose  to  say  to  you.  I  knew  if 
I  didn't  directly  I  got  into  this  room  I'd  forget  every- 
thing I  meant  to  say.  I  know  it  sounds  ridiculous,  the 
way  I  say  it " 

"Unbridled  motherhood?"  repeated  Herr  Dremmel. 
"But — are  you  not  a  pastor's  wife?" 

"Oh,  yes,  yes — I  know,  I  know.  I  know  there's 
Duty  and  Providence,  but  there's  me,  too — there  is  me. 
too.  And,  Robert,  won't  you  see?  We  shall  be  happy 
again  if  I'm  well,  we  shall  be  two  real  people  instead  of 
just  one  person  and  a  bit  of  one — you  and  a  battered 
thing  on  a  sofa " 

'Ingeborg,  you  call  a  wife  and  a  mother  engaged  in 
carrying  out  her  obligations  a  battered  thing  on  ;i 
sofa?" 

'Yes,"  said  Ingeborg,  hurrying  on  to  the  principal 
sentence  of  those  she  had  prepared  at  Zoppot  and 
learned  by  heart,  desperately  clutching  at  it  before 
Robert's  questions  had  undermined  her  courage  and 
befogged  the  issues.  "Yes,  and  I've  come  to  I  lie  con- 
clusion after  ripe  meditation  alter  ripe  yes  the  pro- 
duction of  the     of  the      yes.  of  t  he  already  extinct 

(dead  seemed  an  unkind  word,  almost  rude)  "is  waste- 
ful, and  that — and  that—  Oh,  Robert,"  she  cried, 


284  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

flinging  out  her  hands  and  letting  go  all  the  rest  of  the 
things  she  had  learned  to  say,  "don't  you  think  this 
persistent  parenthood  might  end  now?" 

He  stared  at  her  in  utter  amazement. 

"It — it  disagrees  with  me,"  she  said,  tears  in  her 
voice  and  in  her  anxious,  appealing  eyes. 

"Am  I  to  under " 

"Anyhow  I  can't  go  on,"  she  cried,  twisting  her 
fingers  about  in  an  agony.  '  There's  so  little  of  me  to  go 
on  with.  I'm  getting  stupider  every  day.  I've  got  no 
brains  left.  I've  got  no  anything.  Why,  I  can  hardly 
get  together  enough  courage  to  tell  you  this.  Oh, 
Robert,"  she  appealed,  "it  isn't  as  though  it  made  you 
really  happier — you  don't  really  particularly  notice  the 
children  when  they're  there— it  isn't  as  though  it  made 
anybody  really  happier — and — and — I'm  dreadfully 
sorry,  but  I've  done." 

And  she  dropped  on  to  the  floor  beside  him  and 
put  her  cheek  against  his  sleeve  and  tried  to  make  up 
by  kissing  it  and  clinging  to  it  for  her  subversion  of 
that  strange  tremendous  combination  of  Duty  and  Prov- 
idence that  so  bestrode  her  life.  "If  only  you  wouldn't 
mind "  she  kept  on  saying. 

But  Herr  Dremmel,  for  the  first  time  since  he  had 
known  her,  was  deeply  offended,  deeply  hurt.  She  had 
pierced  his  armour  at  the  one  vulnerable  spot.  His 
manhood  was  outraged;  his  kindness,  his  patience,  his 
affection  were  forgotten  and  spurned.  He  looked  down 
at  the  head  against  his  arm  with  a  face  in  which  wounded 
pride,  wrath,  shockedness  at  so  great  a  defiance  of 
duty,  and  the  amazed  aggrievement  of  him  whose 
gifts  and  blessings  are  not  wanted,  struggled  together. 
Then,  as  she  still  went  on  clinging  and  incoherently 
suggesting  that  he  should  not  mind,  he  rose  up,  took 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  285 

her  by  the  hand,  helped  her  to  her  feet,  and  led  her  to 
the  door;  and  there,  after  facing  her  a  moment  in 
silence  with  it  opened  in  his  hand  while  she  stood 
blinking  up  at  him  with  appealing  eyes,  he  said  dread- 
fully: "Evidently  you  do  not  and  never  have  loved 
me." 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

INGEBORG  crept  away  down  the  passage  with  the 
sound  in  her  ears  of  the  key  being  turned  in  the 
lock  behind  her. 
She  was  crushed.  That  Robert  should  think  she 
had  never  loved  him,  that  he  should  not  even  let  her 
tell  him  how  much  she  had  and  did!  She  stared  out 
of  the  little  window  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs  at  the  un- 
tidy vegetables  in  the  garden.  This  was  the  quality 
of  life — Brussels  sprouts,  and  a  door  being  locked 
behind  one.  It  was  all  grey  and  difficult  and  tragic. 
She  had  hurt  Robert,  offended  him.  He  was  in  there 
thinking  she  didn't  love  him.  What  he  had  said  was 
peculiarly  shattering  coming  from  a  mouth  that  had 
been  always  kind.  Yet  what  was  there  to  do  but  this? 
The  alternative,  it  seemed,  was  somebody's  dying; 
and  if  the  children  did  live  there  would  be  the  death  of 
the  spirit,  the  decay  of  all  lovely  things  in  the  home, 
the  darkening  of  all  light;  there  would  be  neglect, 
apathy,  an  utter  running  to  seed.  But  she  felt  guilty 
and  conscience-stricken.  She  was  no  longer  sure  she 
was  right.  Perhaps  it  was  indeed  her  duty  to  go  on, 
perhaps  she  was  indeed  being  wicked  and  cruel.  The 
clearness  of  vision  that  had  been  hers  at  Zoppot  was 
blurred;  she  was  confused,  infinitely  distressed.  Yet 
through  the  distress  and  confusion  there  kept  on  jabbing 
something  like  a  little  spear  of  light,  and  always  it 
pointed  in  this  one  direction.     .     .     . 

286 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  287 

She  stood  leaning  against  the  wall  by  the  open 
window,  a  miserable  mixture  of  doubt  and  conviction, 
remorse  and  determination.  All  her  life  she  had  been 
servile — servile  with  the  sudden  rare  tremendous  insur- 
rections that  upheave  certain  natures  brought  up  in 
servility,  swift  tempests  more  devastating  than  the 
steady  righting  of  systematic  rebels.  Her  insurrections 
were  epoch-making.  When  they  occurred  the  destiny 
of  an  entire  family  was  changed.  Fathers  and  hus- 
bands were  not  prepared  for  anything  but  continued 
acquiescence  in  one  so  constantly  acquiescent.  As 
far  as  she  was  concerned  they  felt  they  might  sleep 
peacefully  in  their  beds.  Then  this  obedient  thing, 
this  pliable  uncontradicting  thing  would  return,  for 
instance,  from  an  illicit  trip  abroad,  betrothed  to  an 
unknown  foreigner,  and  somehow  in  spite  of  violent 
opposition  marry  him;  or,  as  in  this  second  volcanic 
upheaval,  with  no  preliminaries  whatever,  refuse  point 
blank — the  final  effect  on  Herr  DremmeFs  mind  of  her 
incoherence  was  a  point  blankntss — to  live  with  her 
husband  as  his  wife. 

Behind  the  locked  door  his  anger  was  as  great  as 
her  distressed  confusion  outside  it.  She  was  to  be  his 
wife  but  not  his  wife.  Under  his  roof.  A  perpetual 
irritation.  She  had  decreed,  this  woman  who  had 
nothing  to  decree,  that  then-  were  to  be  no  more  Drem- 
mels.  The  indignation  of  the  thwarted  ancestor  was 
heavy  upon  him.  Her  moral  obliquity  shocked  him, 
her  disregard  for  the  give  and  lake  necessary  if  a 
civilised  community  is  to  continue  efficient.  How  was 
he  going  to  work  with  that  constant  reminder  about 
his  house  of  his  past  placidities?  Already  it  had  begun, 
the  annoyance,  the  hindering,  for  here  he  was  sitting 
in  front  of  his  samples  making  mistakes  in  weighing, 


288  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

adding  up  wrong,  forced  by  humiliatingly  different 
results  each  time  to  count  the  grains  over  and  over 
again. 

Driven  by  the  stress  of  the  situation  to  unfairness, 
he  remembered  with  a  kind  of  bitter  affection  those 
widows  who  had  darkened  his  past  so  soothingly  before 
his  marriage,  the  emotional  peace  their  bony  dustiness, 
their  bonneted  dinginess  had  secured  him.  They  had 
been,  he  perceived,  like  a  dark  blind  shading  his  eyes 
from  the  tormenting  glare  of  too  much  domesticity. 
The  most  infuriated  of  that  black  and  blessed  band 
had  been  better  than  this  threatening  excess  of  rela- 
tionship. Not  one  had  ever  come  between  him  and 
his  steady  reaching  forward.  Not  one  had  even  once 
caused  him  to  count  his  grains  twice  over.  A  man  who 
wishes  to  work,  he  told  himself,  must  clear  his  life  of 
women;  of  all  women,  that  is — for  there  are  certain 
elementary  actions  connected  with  saucepans  and 
bedmaking  that  only  women  will  do — except  widows. 
A  wife  who  is  not  a  wife  and  who  yet  persists  in  looking 
as  if  she  were  one,  can  be  nothing  but  a  goad  and  a 
burden  for  an  honest  man.  Either  she  should  look 
like  some  one  used  up  and  finished  or  she  should  con- 
tinue to  discharge  her  honourable  functions  until  such 
time  as  she  developed  the  physical  unattractiveness  that 
placed  her  definitely  on  the  list  of  women  one  respects. 
That  Ingeborg  should  choose  the  moment  when  she 
seemed  younger  and  rounder  than  ever  to  revolt  against 
Duty  and  Providence  appeared  to  him  in  his  first  wrath 
deliberately  malicious.  He  was  amazed.  He  could 
not  believe  he  was  being  called  out  of  his  important 
and  serious  work,  beckoned  out  of  it  just  when  it  was 
going  so  well,  in  order  to  be  hurt,  in  order  to  be  made 
acquainted  with  pain,  and  by  her  of  all  people  in  the 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  289 

world  whom  he  used  to  call — surely  he  had  been  kind? 
— his  little  sheep.  To  be  hit  by  one's  sheep!  To  be 
hit  violently  by  it  so  that  the  blows  actually  shook  one 
at  the  very  moment  of  greatest  affection  for  it,  of  re- 
joicing over  its  return,  of  plunging  one's  hands  most 
confidently  into  the  comfort  of  its  wool ! 

Herr  Dremmel  was  amazed. 

He  stayed  in  his  laboratory  in  this  condition  till1 
supper;  then,  during  the  meal,  he  carefully  read  a 
book  which  he  propped  up  in  front  of  him  against  the 
loaf,  while  Ingeborg,  ministering  to  him  with  the  eager 
deftness  of  the  conscience-stricken,  watched  for  a  sign 
of  forgiveness  out  of  the  corners  of  red  eyes. 

He  stayed  after  supper  in  his  laboratory  till  past 
midnight,  still  being  amazed,  reduced  indeed  at  last  to 
walking  up  and  down  that  calm  temple  of  untiring  at- 
tempts to  nail  down  ultimate  causes,  considering  how 
best  he  could  bring  his  wife  to  reason. 

The  business  of  bringing  a  woman  to  reason  had 
always  seemed  to  him  quite  the  most  extravagant  way 
of  wasting  good  time.  To  have  to  discuss,  argue,  ex- 
plain, threaten,  adjure,  only  in  order  to  get  back  to 
the  point  from  which  nobody  ought  ever  to  have  started, 
was  the  silliest  of  all  silly  necessities.  Again  he 
fumed  at  the  thought  of  an  untraceable,  undutiful  wife 
about  him,  and  recognised  the  acute  need  to  be  clear 
of  feminine  childishness,  egotism,  unforeseeable  resili- 
ences, if  a  man  would  work.  In  his  stirred  state  it 
appeared  altogether  monstrous  thai  the  whole  world 
should  be  blotted  out,  the  great  wide  world  of  mag- 
nificent opportunity  and  spacious  interest,  even  for  a 
day,  even  for  an  hour,  by  the  power  to  make  him  un- 
comfortable, by  the  power  to  make  him  concentrate  his 
brains  on  an  irrelevant  situation,  of  one  small  woman. 


290  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

He  went  to  their  room  about  half-past  twelve  de- 
termined to  have  no  more  of  the  nonsense.  He  would 
bring  her  then  and  there,  by  the  shortest  possible  route, 
to  reason.  He  would  have  it  out  even  to  the  extent 
of  severity  and  have  done  with  it.  He  was  master,  and 
if  she  forced  him  to  emphasize  the  fact  he  would. 

Carrying  the  lamp  he  went  to  their  room  with  the 
firm  footsteps  of  one  who  has  ceased  to  be  going  to 
stand  things. 

But  the  room  was  empty.  It  was  as  chillily  empty 
of  wifely  traces  as  it  had  been  since  the  beginning  of 
June. 

"This  is  paltry,"  thought  Herr  Dremmel,  feeling 
the  offence  was  now  so  great  as  to  have  become  ri- 
diculous; and  determined  to  discover  into  what  fast- 
ness she  had  withdrawn  and  fetch  her  out  of  it,  he 
went  lamp  in  hand  doggedly  through  the  house  looking 
for  her,  beginning  with  the  thorough  patience  of  one 
accustomed  to  research  in  the  kitchen,  where  shy  cock- 
roaches peeped  at  him  round  the  legs  of  tables,  ex- 
amining the  parlour,  stuffy  with  the  exhaustion  of  an 
ended  day,  penetrating  into  a  room  in  which  Rosa  and 
the  cook  reared  themselves  up  in  their  beds  to  regard 
him  with  horror  unspeakable,  and  at  last  stumbling  up 
the  narrow  staircase  to  where  Robertlet  and  Ditti  slept 
the  sleep  of  the  unvaryingly  just. 

Here,  in  a  third  small  bed  of  the  truckle  type,  lay 
his  defaulting  wife,  her  face  to  the  wall,  her  body  com- 
posed into  an  excess  of  motionlessness. 

"Ingeborg!"  he  called,  holding  the  lamp  high  over 
his  head. 

But  she  did  not  stir. 

"Ingeborg!"  he  called  again. 

But  never  did  woman  sleep  so  soundly. 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  291 

He  walked  across  to  the  bed  and  bent  over,  search- 
ing her  face  by  the  light  of  the  lamp.  Most  of  it  was 
buried  in  the  pillow,  but  the  one  eye  visible  was  tightly 
shut,  more  immensely  asleep  than  any  eye  he  had  ever 
seen. 

The  indifference  that  could  sleep  while  her  outraged 
husband  was  looking  for  her  revolted  him.  Without 
making  any  further  attempt  to  wake  her  he  turned 
on  his  heel,  and  slamming  the  door  behind  him  went 
downstairs  again. 

'That  is  thieves  at  last,"  remarked  Ditti,  who  had 
been  expecting  them  for  years,  brought  out  of  her 
dreams — good  dreams — by  the  noise  of  the  door. 

'Yes,"  said  Robertlet,  also  roused  from  dreams  that 
did  him  credit. 

'We  must  now  get  under  the  clothes,"  said  Ditti, 
who  had  settled  long  ago  what  would  be  the  right 
thing  to  do. 

"Yes,"  said  Robertlet. 

'You  needn't,"  said  Ingeborg  out  of  the  darkness — 
they  both  started,  they  had  forgotten  she  was  there — 
"it  was  only  Papa." 

But  the  thought  of  Papa  coming  up  to  their  room 
and  banging  the  door  in  the  middle  of  the  night  filled 
t  hem  in  its  strangeness  with  an  even  greater  uneasiness; 
they  would  have  preferred  thieves;  and  after  some  pre- 
liminary lying  quiet  and  being  good  they  one  after  the 
other  withdrew  as  silently  as  possible  beneath  the  com- 
fort of  the  clothes,  where  they  waited  in  neat  patience 
for  the  next  thing  Papa  might  do  until,  stifled  but  un- 
complaining, they  once  more  fell  asleep. 

There  followed  some  days  of  strain  in  the  Kokensee 
parsonage. 

Herr  Dremmel  retired  into  an  extremity  of  silence, 

1/ 


292  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

made  no  allusion  to  these  regrettable  incidents,  became 
at  meals  a  mere  figure  behind  a  newspaper,  and  at  other 
times  was  not  there  at  all. 

He  had  decided  that  he  would  not  waste  his  energies 
in  anger.  At  the  earliest  opportunity  he  would  drive 
in  to  Meuk,  call  on  the  doctor,  and  after  explaining 
the  effect  of  Zoppot,  a  place  which  was  to  have  cured 
her,  on  his  wife,  request  him  now  to  prescribe  a  cure 
for  the  cure.  It  was  Ingeborg's  business  to  come  to 
her  husband  and  ask  for  forgiveness,  and  he  would 
give  her  these  few  days  in  which  to  do  it.  If  she  did 
not  he  would  know,  after  consultation  with  the  doctor, 
what  course  to  take — whether  of  severity,  or  whether, 
setting  aside  his  manhood,  it  was  not  rather  an  occasion 
on  which  one  ought  to  coax.  He  was,  after  all,  too 
humane  to  resort  without  medical  sanction  to  scenes. 
Perhaps  what  she  needed  was  only  a  corrective  to  Zop- 
pot.   There  was  such  a  thing  as  excess  of  salubriousness. 

Having  made  up  his  mind,  he  found  himself  calmer, 
able  to  work  again  in  the  knowledge  that  in  a  few  days 
he  would  be  clear,  with  the  aid  of  the  doctor,  as  to 
what  should  be  done;  and  Ingeborg  had  nothing  to 
complain  of  except  that  he  would  not  speak.  Several 
times  she  tried  to  reopen  the  so  hastily  closed  subject, 
but  got  no  further  in  the  face  of  his  monumental  silence 
than  "But,  Robert " 

She  took  the  children  for  outings  in  the  forest,  and 
while  they  did  not  chatter  merrily  together  and  did 
not  play  at  games  she  thought  over  all  the  ways  that 
were  really  tactfulV)f  luring  him  to  reasonable  discus- 
sion. She  knew  she  ihad  made  a  lamentable  first  ap- 
pearance in  the  role  oT  a  retiring  mother,  but  how 
difficult  it  was  when  you  felt  overwhelmingly  to  talk 
objectively.     And  then  there  were  tears.     A  woman 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  293 

cried,  and  what  a  handicap  that  was.  Before  the  first 
semicolon  in  any  vital  discourse  with  one's  husband  was 
reached  one  was  dissolved  in  tears,  thought  Ingeborg, 
ashamed  and  resentful;  and  Robert  grew  so  calm  and 
patient,  so  disconcertingly  calm  and  patient  when  faced 
by  crying;  he  sat  there  like  some  large  god,  untouched 
by  human  distress,  waiting  for  the  return  of  reason. 
It  is  true  he  cried,  too,  sometimes,  but  only  about  odd 
things  like  Christmas  Eves  and  sons  if  they  were  suffi- 
ciently new  born — things  that  came  under  the  category 
surely  of  cheerful,  at  most  of  cheerfully  touching;  but 
he  never  cried  about  these  great  important  issues,  these 
questions  on  which  all  one's  happiness  hung.  Life 
would  run  more  easily,  she  thought,  if  husbands  and 
wives  had  the  same  taste  in  tears. 

Four  days  after  her  return  home  she  asked  him  to 
forgive  her. 

It  was  at  the  end  of  supper,  and  he  had  just  removed 
his  book  from  the  supporting  loaf  and  was  getting  up 
to  go  when  she  ran  across  to  him  with  the  quickness 
of  despair  and  laid  hold  of  him  by  both  his  sleeves  and 
said,  "Forgive  me." 

He  looked  down  at  her  with  a  gleam  in  his  eye;  he 
would  not  have  to  go  to  Meuk  after  all. 

'Do,"  she  begged.  "Robert!  Do!  You  know  I 
love  you.  I'm  so  miserable  to  have  hurt  you.  Do  let  s 
be  friends.     Won't  we?" 

'Friends?"  echoed  Herr  Dremmel,  drawing  back. 
"Is  that  all  you  have  to  say  to  me?" 

"Oh,  do  be  friends!     I  can't  bear  this." 
'Ingeborg,"    he    said    with    the    severity    of    disap- 
pointment, pulling  his   sleeves   out   of   her   hands   and 
going  to  the  door,  "have  you  then  not  yet  discovered 
that  a  true  husband  and  wife  can  never  be  friends?" 


294  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"Oh,  but  how  dreadful!"  said  Ingeborg,  dropping 
her  hands  by  her  side  and  staring  after  him  as  he  went 
out. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  week,  when  her  unassisted 
meditations  continued  to  produce  no  suggestions  of  any 
use  for  removing  the  stain  that  undoubtedly  rested  on 
her,  she  thought  she  would  go  in  to  Meuk  and  seek  the 
counsel  of  the  doctor.  He  had  always  been  good  to 
her,  kind  and  understanding.  She  would  go  to  him 
more  in  the  spirit  of  one  who  goes  to  a  priest  than  to 
a  doctor,  and  inquire  of  him  earnestly  what  she  should 
do  to  be  saved. 

She  found  the  position  at  home  unendurable.  If 
the  doctor  told  her  that  it  was  her  duty  to  go  on  hav- 
ing children,  and  that  it  was  mere  chance  the  two  last 
had  been  born  dead,  she  would  resume  her  career. 
It  was  a  miserable  career — a  terrible,  maimed  thing — 
but  less  miserable  than  doubt  as  to  whether  one  were 
not  being  wicked  and  Robert  was  being  utterly  right. 
Not  for  nothing  was  she  the  daughter  of  a  bishop,  and 
had  enjoyed  for  twenty-two  years  the  privileges  of  a 
Christian  home.  Also  she  well  knew  that  the  public 
opinion  of  Kokensee  and  Glambeck  would  be  against 
her  in  this  matter  of  rebellion,  and  she  felt  too  weak 
to  stand  up  alone  against  these  big  things.  She  had 
never  been  able  to  hold  out  long  against  prolonged 
disapproval;  nor  had  she  ever  been  able  to  endure  that 
people  round  her  should  not  be  happy.  By  the  end 
of  the  week  she  was  so  wretched  and  so  full  of  doubts 
that  she  decided  to  put  her  trust  in  Meuk  and  abide 
by  the  decision  of  its  doctor;  and  so  it  happened  that 
she  set  out  on  the  five-mile  walk  to  it  on  the  same  day 
on  which  Herr  Dremmel  drove  there. 

He  had  driven  off  in  the  middle  of  the  morning 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  295 

with  sandwiches  for  himself  and  the  coachman  in  the 
direction  of  the  experiment  ground,  telling  her  he 
would  not  be  in  till  the  evening,  so  she  seized  the  fa- 
vourable opportunity  and,  also  armed  with  sandwiches, 
started  soon  after  twelve  o'clock  for  Meuk.  The 
doctor's  consulting  hour  was,  she  knew,  from  two  to 
three,  and  if  she  were  there  punctually  at  two  she  could 
talk  to  him,  have  her  fate  decided,  and  be  home  again 
by  four. 

She  walked  along  the  edge  of  the  harvested  rye-fields 
eating  her  sandwiches  as  she  went,  and  refusing  to 
think  for  this  brief  hour  and  a  half  of  the  difficulties 
of  life.  Her  mind  was  weary  of  them.  She  would  put 
them  away  from  her  for  this  one  walk.  It  was  the 
brightest  of  August  middays.  The  world  seemed  filled 
with  every  element  of  happiness.  Some  people,  prob- 
ably friends  of  the  Glambecks,  were  shooting  partridges 
over  the  stubble.  The  lupin  fields  were  in  their  full 
glory,  and  their  peculiar  orange  scent  met  her  all  along 
the  way.  There  was  a  mile  of  sandy  track  to  be  waded 
through,  and  then  came  four  good  miles  of  hard  white 
highroad  between  reddening  mountain  ashes  to  Meuk. 
Walking  in  that  clear  fresh  warmth,  so  bright  with 
colour,  so  sweet  with  scents,  she  could  not  but  begin 
gradually  to  glow,  and  by  the  time  she  arrived  at  the 
doctor's  house,  however  wan  her  spirits  might  be,  the 
rest  of  her  was  so  rosy  that  the  servant  who  opened 
the  door  tried  to  head  her  off  from  the  waiting-room 
to  the  other  end  of  the  passage,  persuaded  that  what 
she  had  come  for  could  not  be  the  doctor,  but  an  ani- 
mated call  on  the  doctor's  wife.  She  entered  the 
waiting-room,  a  dingy  place,  with  much  the  effect  of 
a  shaft  of  light  piercing  through  a  fog;  and  there,  sit- 
ting at  the  table,   turning  over  the  fingered   and   aged 


296  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

piles  of  illustrated  weeklies,  she  found  Herr  Dremmel. 
For  a  moment  they  stared  at  each  other. 

There  was  no  one  else  there.  Through  folding- 
doors  could  be  heard  the  murmur  of  a  patient  con- 
sulting in  the  next  room.  Meuk  was  not  usually  a 
sick  place,  and  nine  times  out  of  ten  the  doctor  read 
his  newspaper  undisturbed  from  two  to  three;  this  was 
the  tenth  time,  and  though  it  had  only  just  struck  two 
a  patient  was  with  him  already. 

Herr  Dremmel  and  Ingeborg  stared  at  each  other 
for  a  moment  without  speaking.  Then  he  said,  sud- 
denly angered  by  the  realisation  that  she  had  come 
in  to  Meuk  without  asking  him  if  she  might,  "You  did 
not  tell  me  you  were  coming  here." 

"No,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"Why  have  you  come?" 

She  sat  down  as  inconspicuously  as  she  could  on 
the  edge  of  a  chair  in  a  corner  and  clung  to  her  um- 
brella. It  was  the  awkwardest  thing  meeting  Robert 
there. 

"I — I  just  thought  I  would,"  she  murmured. 

"  You  do  not  look  ill.     You  were  not  ill  this  morning." 

"It's — psychological,"  murmured  Ingeborg  unnerved, 
and  laying  hold  of  the  first  word  that  darted  into  her 
undisciplined  brain. 

"Psycho ?" 

"Are  you  ill,  Robert?"  she  asked,  suddenly  anxious. 
"Why  have  you  come?" 

"My  dear  wife,  that  is  my  affair,"  said  Herr  Drem- 
mel, who  was  particularly  annoyed  and  puzzled  by  her 
presence. 

"Oh,"  murmured  Ingeborg.  She  had  never  yet 
heard  herself  called  his  dear  wife,  and  felt  the  immensity 
of  her  relegation  to  her  proper  place. 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  297 

He  fluttered  the  pages  of  the  Fliegende  Blatter;  she 
held  on  tighter  to  what  seemed  to  be  her  only  friend, 
her  umbrella. 

"Did  you  walk?"  he  asked  presently,  letting  off  the 
question  at  her  like  a  gun. 

"Yes — oh,  yes,"  said  Ingeborg,  with  hasty  meekness. 

What  had  she  come  for?  thought  Herr  Dremmel, 
fluttering  the  pages  faster.  Ridiculous  to  pretend  she 
needed  a  doctor.  She  looked,  sitting  there  with  her 
unusual  pink  cheeks,  like  a  flourishing  sixteen — at  most 
eighteen. 

What  had  he  come  for?  thought  Ingeborg,  wishing 
life  would  not  deal  so  upsettingly  in  coincidences,  and 
keeping  her  eyes  carefully  on  the  carpet.  Then  a  swift 
fear  jumped  at  her  heart — suppose  he  were  ill?  Sup- 
pose he  had  begun  to  have  one  of  those  large,  deter- 
mined, obscure  diseases  that  seem  to  mow  down  men 
and  make  the  world  so  much  a  place  of  widows?  She 
had  observed  that  for  one  widower  in  Kokensee 
and  the  surrounding  district  there  were  ten  widows. 
The  women  appeared  to  ail  through  life,  constantly 
being  smitten  down  by  one  thing  after  the  other,  but  at 
least  they  stayed  alive;  while  the  men,  who  went  year 
by  year  out  robustly  to  work,  died  after  a  single  smiting. 
'Perhaps  it's  want  of  practice  in  being  smitten,"  she 
thought;  and  looked  anxiously  under  her  eyelashes 
at  Robert,  struggling  with  a  desire  to  go  over  and  im- 
plore him  to  tell  her  what  was  the  matter.  In  another 
moment  she  would  have  gone,  driven  across  by  her 
impulses,  if  the  folding-doors  had  not  been  thrown 
open  and  the  doctor  appeared  bowing. 

" Darf  ich  bitten  P"  said  the  doctor  to  Herr  Dremmel, 
not  perceiving  Ingeborg,  who  was  shuttered  out  of 
sight  by  the  one  half  of  the  door  he  had  opened.     "Ah 


298  THE  PASTORS  WIFE 

— it  is  the  Herr  Pastor,"  he  added  less  officially  on 
recognising  him,  and  advanced  holding  out  his  hand. 
"I  hope,  my  friend,  there  is  nothing  wrong  with  you?" 

Herr  Dremmel  did  not  answer,  but  seizing  his  hat 
made  a  movement  of  a  forestalling  character  towards 
the  consulting  room;  and  the  doctor  turning  to  follow 
him  beheld  Ingeborg  in  her  corner  behind  the  door. 

"Ah — the  Frau  Pastor,"  he  said,  bowing  again  and 
again  advancing  with  an  extended  hand.  'Which," 
he  added,  looking  from  one  to  the  other,  "is  the  pa- 
tient?" 

But  Herr  Dremmel's  back,  disappearing  with  deter- 
mination into  the  next  room,  suggested  an  acute  need 
of  assistance  not  visible  in  his  wife's  retiring  attitude. 

"You'll  tell  me  the  truth  about  him,  won't  you?" 
she  whispered,  anxiously.  "You  won't  hide  things  from 
mer 

The  doctor  looked  grave.  "Is  it  so  serious?"  he 
asked;  and  hurried  after  Herr  Dremmel  and  shut  the 
door. 

Ingeborg  sat  and  waited  for  what  seemed  a  long 
time.  She  heard  much  murmuring,  and  often  both 
voices  murmured  together,  which  puzzled  her.  Some- 
times, indeed,  they  ceased  to  be  murmurs  and  rose  to  a 
point  at  which  they  became  distinct — "You  forget  I 
am  a  Christian  pastor,"  she  heard  Robert  say— but  they 
dropped  again,  though  never  into  a  pause,  never  into 
those  moments  of  silence  during  which  Robert  might 
be  guessed  to  be  putting  out  his  tongue  or  having 
suspect  portions  of  his  person  prodded.  She  sat  there 
worried  and  anxious,  all  her  own  affairs  forgotten  in 
this  fear  of  something  amiss  with  him;  and  when  at 
last  the  door  opened  again  and  both  men  came  out  she 
got  up  eagerly  and  said,  "Well?" 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  299 

Herr  Dremmel  was  looking  very  solemn;  more  en- 
tirely solemn  than  she  had  ever  seen  him:  almost  as 
though  he  had  already  attained  to  that  crown  of  a 
man's  career,  that  final  touch  of  all,  that  last  gift  to 
the  world,  a  widow  and  orphans.  The  doctor's  face  was 
a  careful  blank. 

'Well?"  said  Ingeborg  again,  greatly  alarmed. 

:'Does  the  Frau  Pastor  also  wish  to  consult  me?" 
asked  the  doctor. 

"Yes.  I  did.  But  it  doesn't  really  matter  now. 
Robert " 

Herr  Dremmel  was  putting  on  his  hat  very  firmly 
and  going  towards  the  outer  door  without  saying  good- 
bye to  the  doctor.  "I  will  wait  for  you  outside  and 
drive  you  home,  Ingeborg,"  he  said,  not  looking  round. 

She  stared  after  him.  "Is  he  very  ill?"  she  asked, 
turning  to  the  doctor. 

"No." 

"No?" 

"No,"  said  the  doctor,  with  a  stress  on  it. 

"But " 

"And  you  look  very  well,  too.  Pray,  keep  so.  It 
is  not  necessary,  judging  from  your  appearance,  to 
consult  me  further.  I  will  conduct  vou  to  vour  car- 
riage." 

''But "  said  Ingeborg,  who  found  herself  being 

offered  an  arm  and  led  ceremoniously  after  Robert. 

'Take  your  tonic,  be  much  in  the  sun,   and   alter 
nothing  in  your  present  mode  of  life,"  said  the  doctor. 

"But  Robert-     -" 

'The  Herr  Pastor  enjoys  excellent  health,  and  will 
throw  himself  with  more  zeal  than  ever  into  his  work." 

"Then  why " 

"And  the  Frau  Pastor  will  do  her  duty." 


300  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"Yes." 

She  stopped  and  faced  him.  "Yes,"  she  said,  "I'm 
going  to,  but — what  is  my  duty?" 

"My  dear  Frau  Pastor,  there  is  only  one  left.  You 
have  discharged  all  the  others.  Your  one  duty  now  is 
to  keep  well  in  body  and  mind,  provide  your  two 
children  with  a  capable  mother,  and  your  husband  with 
a  companion  possessed  of  the  intelligent  amiability  that 
springs  from  good  health." 

"But  Robert ?" 

"He  has  been  consulting  me  about  you.  I  will  not 
allow  you  to  turn  him,  who  deserves  so  well  of  fate,  into 
that  unhappy  object,  a  widower." 

"Oh?    So  really ?" 

He  opened  the  front  door.     'Yes,"  he  said,  "really." 

And  he  handed  her  up  into  the  seat  next  to  Herr 
Dremmel  and  waved  them  off  on  their  homeward 
journey  with  friendly  gestures. 

And  Ingeborg,  now  aware  that  the  real  cause  of 
Robert's  preternatural  gloom  was  the  dread  of  losing 
her,  not  the  dread  of  leaving  her,  was  deeply  touched 
and  full  of  a  desire  to  express  her  appreciation.  She 
slid  her  hand  through  his  arm  and  spent  the  time  be- 
tween Meuk  and  Kokensee  earnestly  endeavouring  to 
reassure  him.  He  was  not,  after  all,  she  eagerly  ex- 
plained, going  to  be  a  widower. 

He  bore  her  comforting  in  silence. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

BEING  a  wise  man,  Heir  Dremmel  lost  no  time 
in  fidgeting  or  lamenting  over  the  inevitable, 
but  having  heard  the  doctor's  summing  up, 
which  was  expressed  in  the  one  firm  word  repeated  over 
and  over  again  like  a  series  of  blows,  ausgeschlossen, 
he  ruled  Ingeborg  out  of  his  thoughts  as  a  wife  and 
proceeded  to  train  himself  to  contemplate  her  as  a 
sister. 

After  a  short  period  of  solemnity,  for  he  was  not 
sure  whether  the  training  would  not  be  tormenting 
and  grievously  interfere  with  his  work,  he  became  serene 
again,  for  to  his  satisfaction  he  found  it  easy.  The 
annoyance  of  having  supposed  his  wife  to  be  undutiful, 
the  pain  of  having  believed  her  to  be  deliberately  hurt- 
ing him,  was  removed.  He  was  faced  by  a  simple  fact 
that  had  nothing  to  do  with  personalities.  It  was  un- 
fortunate that  he  should  have  married  some  one  who  was 
so  very,  he  could  not  help  thinking,  easily  killed,  but  on 
the  other  hand  he  was  less  dependent  on  domestic  joys 
than  most  members  of  that  peculiarly  dependent  pro- 
fession, the  Church,  for  he  had  his  brains.  He  was  sur- 
prised how  easy,  once  lie  recognised  its  inevitability, 
the  readjustment  of  the  relationship  was,  how  easily  and 
comfortably  he  forgot.  She  seemed  to  drop  off  him 
like  a  leaf  off  a  tree  in  autumn,  a  lighl  thing  who-' 
detachment  from  the  great  remaining  strength,  the 
reaching  down  and   reaching  up,   was   not  felt.     His 

301 


302  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

mind  became  fitted  with  wife-tight  compartments.  He 
ceased,  he  who  had  feared  these  things  might  come 
to  be  an  obsession,  so  much  as  to  see  that  she  was  pretty, 
that  she  was  soft,  that  she  was  sweet.  Just  as  when 
first  he  met  her  he  had  been  pleased  and  interested  to 
find  he  could  fall  in  love  so  now  he  was  pleased  and 
interested  to  find,  when  it  was  a  matter  of  reason  and 
necessity,  he  could  fall  out  again.  He  was,  it  seemed, 
master  of  himself.  Passions  were  his  servants,  and 
came  only  as  it  were  when  he  rang  the  bell.  All  one 
had  to  do  then  was  not  to  ring  the  bell.  With  satis- 
faction he  observed  that  in  a  crisis  of  the  emotions  (he 
supposed  one  might  fairly  call  it  that)  the  training  he 
had  bestowed  on  his  reason,  the  attention  he  had  given 
it  from  his  youth  up,  was  bearing  fruit  not  only  abun- 
dant but  ripe.  Ingeborg  was  transformed  in  his  eyes 
with  gratifying  rapidity  into  a  sister — a  gentle  maiden 
sister  who  on  the  demise  of  his  wife  had  taken  over  the 
housekeeping;  and  when  in  the  evenings  he  bade  her  a 
kind  good-night  he  found  himself  doing  it  quite  naturally 
on  her  forehead.  He  did  not  tell  her  she  had  become 
a  sister;  he  merely  rearranged  his  life  on  these  new 
lines;  and  he  did,  as  the  doctor  had  predicted,  throw 
himself  into  his  work  with  more  zeal  than  ever,  and 
very  soon  was  once  again  being  pervaded  by  the  blessed 
calms,  the  serenities,  the  unequalled  harmonies  that  are 
the  portion  of  him  who  diligently  does  what  he  is  in- 
terested in. 

But  Ingeborg,  who  had  neglected  her  reason  in  her 
youth  and  whose  mind  consequently  was  strictly  un- 
disciplined, spent  the  first  few  weeks  of  being  a  sister 
in  a  condition  of  what  can  only  be  described  as  fluffing 
about.  She  took  hold  of  an  end  of  life  here  that  seemed 
to  be  sticking  out  and  tugged  it,  and  of  an  end  of  life 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  303 

there  that  seemed  to  be  sticking  out  and  tugged  it,  and 
looked  at  them  inquiringly  and  let  them  go  again.  She 
did  not  quite  know,  so  rich  in  liberty  had  she  suddenly 
become,  where  to  begin.  There  were  so  many  ends  to 
life,  and  she  was  so  free  to  choose  that  she  blinked  a 
little.  Here  were  her  days,  swept  out  and  empty  for 
her  at  last.  Here  she  was  able  to  say  magnificently, 
"Next  month  I'll  do  this  or  that,"  sure  of  her  months, 
sure  of  their  being  arrangeable  things,  flexible  to  her 
will,  not  each  just  a  great  black  leaden  weight  holding 
her  pinned  down  more  and  more  heavily  to  a  sofa.  And 
not  only  could  she  say  confidently  what  she  would  do 
next  month,  but  also,  and  this  small  thing  like  many 
other  small  things  of  the  sort  seemed  curiously  new  and 
delightful,  she  could  say  confidently  what  she  would 
wear.  All  those  dreary  tea-gowns  in  which  she  had 
trailed  through  the  seven  years  of  her  marriage,  dark 
garments  whose  sole  function  was  to  hide,  were  given 
to  Use,  her  first  servant,  who  had  married  poverty  and 
who  f  rugallyturned  them  into  trousers  of  assorted  shapes 
for  her  husband,  embittering  him  permanently;  and 
from  long-forgotten  cupboards  she  got  out  small  neat 
frocks  again,  portions  of  her  unworn  tremendous  trous- 
seau, short  things,  washable  and  tidy,  and  was  refreshed 
into  respect  for  herself  as  a  decent  human  being  by  the 
mere  putting  of  them  on. 

Her  days  at  first  held  any  number  of  these  new 
sensations  or  rather  recognitions  of  sensations  that  used 
in  her  girlhood  to  be  a  matter  of  course,  but  now  were 
seen  to  be  extraordinarily  precious.  She  spilt  over  like 
a  brimming  chalice  of  gratefulness  for  the  great  common 
tilings  of  life — sleep,  hunger,  power  to  move  about, 
freedom  from  fear,  freedom  from  pain.  Her  returning 
heal  1 1 1  ran  through  her  veins  like  some  exquisite  deli- 


304  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

cate  wine.  She  was  now  thirty,  and  had  never  felt  so 
young.  Wonderful  to  wake  up  in  the  morning  to  an- 
other day  of  being  well.  Wonderful  being  allowed  to  be 
alive  in  a  world  so  utterly  beautiful,  so  full  of  opportu- 
nity. She  had  all  the  thankfulness,  the  tender  giving  of 
herself  up  confidently  to  joy  of  the  convalescent.  She 
was  happy  just  to  sit  on  fine  mornings  on  the  doorstep 
in  the  sun  drinking  things  in.  Robertlet  and  Ditti  had 
never  been  so  much  kissed ;  Rosa  and  the  cook  had  never 
been  asked  so  often  after  their  ailing  mothers ;  Kokensee 
had  never  been  so  near  having  a  series  of  entertainments 
arranged  for  it.  The  very  cat  was  stroked  with  a  fresh 
sense  of  fellowship,  the  very  watchdog,  at  one  time 
suspected  of  surliness,  was  loved  anew;  and  when  she 
passed  through  the  yard  she  did  not  fail  to  pause  and 
gaze  with  a  sunny  determined  kindness  at  the  pig. 

But  though  she  passionately  wanted  to  make  every- 
body and  everything  happy  in  return  for  Robert's 
goodness  to  her,  in  return  for  the  kind  way  she  thought 
he  was  accepting  her  decision  and  not  once  after  that 
first  outbreak  reproaching  her,  she  had  been  anchored 
too  long  to  one  definite  behaviour  not  to  feel  a  little  un- 
steady when  first  let  loose.  She  hovered  uncertainly 
round  the  edges  of  life,  fingering  them,  trying  to  feel 
the  point  where  she  could  best  catch  hold  and  climb  into 
its  fulness  again. 

It  was  oddly  difficult. 

Was  it  that  she  had  been  out  of  things  for  so  many 
years?  Had  she  then  become  a  specialist?  As  the 
weeks  passed  and  the  first  sheer  delight  in  just  being 
well  was  blunted  by  repetition,  she  began  to  be  puzzled. 
Everything  began  to  puzzle  her — herself,  Robert,  the 
children,  the  servants.  Robert  puzzled  her  extremely. 
Whenever  before  she  had  been  happy,  a  cheerful  sing- 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  305 

ing  thing,  he  had  loved  her.  She  knew  he  had.  She 
had  only  to  be  in  a  gay  mood,  in  the  mood  that  reck- 
lessly didn't  mind  whether  he  liked  it  or  not  but  sat  on 
his  knee  and  insisted  on  his  listening  while  she  talked, 
half  in  earnest  and  half  amused,  about  the  bigger, 
vaguer,  windier  aspects  of  life,  for  him  to  come  up  out 
of  the  depths  of  his  meditations  and  laugh  and  pet  her. 
Now  nothing  fetched  him  up.  He  was  quite  unrespon- 
sive. He  seemed  beyond  her  reach,  in  some  strange 
retreat  where  she  could  not  get  at  him.  She  had  never 
felt  so  far  away  from  him.  He  was  not  angry  evidently ; 
he  was  quite  kind.  She  could  not  guess  that  this  steady 
unenthusiastic  kindness  was  the  natural  expression  of  a 
fraternal  regard. 

"But  he  does  love  me,"  she  said  to  herself,  altogether 
unaware  of  the  smallness  of  the  place  in  the  world  oc- 
cupied by  negative  persons  like  sisters — "he  does  love 
me. 

She  said  it  several  times  a  day,  hugging  it  to  herself 
as  the  weeks  went  on  in  much  the  same  way  that  a  coach- 
man, growing  cold  on  his  box,  hugs  his  chest,  not  having 
anything  else  to  hug,  at  intervals  to  keep  his  circulation 
going;  and  particularly  she  said  it  on  her  way  up  to  the 
attic  after  the  administration  of  the  good-night  kiss. 

In  spite  of  this  assurance,  she  found  herself  presently 
beginning  to  hesitate  before  she  spoke  lo  him  or  touched 
him,  wondering  whether  lie  would  like  it.  She  tried  to 
shake  off  these  increasing  timidities,  and  once  or  twice 
intrepidly  stroked  his  hair;  but  his  head,  bent  over  his 
dinner  or  his  book,  seemed  unconscious  that  she  was 
doing  it,  and  she  felt  unable  to  go  on. 

"But  he  does  love  me,"  she  said  to  herself. 

It  was  not  long  before  she  perceived  definitely  that  she 
had  ceased  to  amuse  him,  and  the  moment  she  discov- 


306  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

ered  this  she  ceased  to  be  amusing :  her  gaiety  went  out 
like  a  light. 

"But  he  does  love  me,"  she  still  said  to  herself. 

He  called  her  Ingeborg  regularly,  never  wife  or  Little 
One,  and  it  soon  came  to  be  unthinkable  that  she  should 
ever  have  been  his  treasure,  snail,  or  sheep.  He  did  it, 
however,  quite  kindly,  with  no  trace  of  the  rebuke  it 
used  invariably  to  contain. 

"But  he  does  love  me,"  she  still  said  to  herself. 

Puzzled,  she  racked  her  brain  to  think  of  ways  to 
please  him,  and  tried  to  make  his  house  as  comfortably 
perfect  for  him  as  possible,  performing  every  duty  she 
could  find  or  invent  with  a  thoroughness  that  by  eleven 
o'clock  in  the  morning  had  exhausted  the  supply.  Herr 
Dremmel,  however,  was  not  accessible  by  ways  of  order 
and  good  food ;  he  had  never  noticed  their  absence,  and 
he  did  not  now  notice  their  presence.  She  saw  after  a 
while  herself  that  his  sum  of  happiness  was  not  in  the 
least  increased  by  them.  How  could  she  make  him 
happy,  then?  What  could  she  do  to  make  his  life  the 
brightest  serene  thing? 

It  was  a  shock  to  her,  an  immense  and  shattering  sur- 
prise, the  day  she  realised  that  all  this  time  he  was,  in 
fact,  being  happy.  She  walked  in  the  garden  long  that 
day,  staring  hard  at  this  new  perception,  pondering, 
astonished. 

"But  he  does  I "  she  began;  and  stopped. 

Did  he?  What  was  the  good  of  saying  he  did  if  he 
didn't?  Was  everything  with  him,  and  perhaps  with 
other  husbands — she  knew  so  little  about  husbands — 
bound  up  with  parenthood?  WTas  it  true,  what  he  said 
to  her  the  day  she  begged  him  to  be  friends,  that  a 
husband  and  wife  could  never  be  friends?  She  felt  so 
entirely  able  to  love  Robert,  to  love  him  tenderly  and 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  307 

deeply,  without  perpetually  being  somebody's  mother. 
Perhaps  wives  could  be  friends  and  husbands  couldn't. 
She  wished  she  knew  more  about  these  things.  She  felt 
she  did  not  rightly  understand;  and  suspected,  walking 
up  and  down  the  damp  October  garden,  that  being  a 
bishop's  daughter  was  an  inefficient  preparation  for 
being  anybody's  wife.  It  kept  one's  mind  muffled.  You 
were  brought  up  not  to  look.  If  you  wanted  to  see  you 
had  to  be  furtive  and  peep  at  life  over  the  edge,  as  it 
were,  of  your  Prayer-book,  which  made  you  feel  wicked 
and  didn't  give  you  any  sort  of  a  view.  All  bish- 
ops' daughters,  she  said  to  herself  walking  fast,  for  her 
thoughts  became  tumultuous  on  this  subject,  ought  to  be 
maiden  ladies;  or,  if  they  couldn't  manage  that  as  St. 
Paul  would  say,  they  should  at  least  only  marry  more 
bishops.  Not  curates,  not  vicars,  not  mysterious  elu- 
sivenesses  like  German  pastors,  but  bishops.  People 
they  were  used  to.  People  they  understood.  Continu- 
ations. Second  volumes.  Sequels.  Aprons.  Curates 
might  have  convulsive  moments  that  would  worry  souls 
blanched  white  by  the  keeping  out  of  the  light,  souls  like 
celery,  no  whiter  than  anybody  else's  if  left  properly  to 
themselves,  but  blanched  by  a  continual  banking  up 
round  them  of  episcopal  mould;  and  even  a  vicar  might 
conceivably  sometimes  be  headlong;  while  as  for  a  Ger- 
man pastor     .     .     .     She  flung  out  her  hands. 

Well,  Robert  was  not  headlong.  No  one  could 
accuse  him  of  anything  but  the  most  steady  sequence 
in  his  steps.  But  he  was.  she  thought,  not  having  the 
clue  to  Herr  Drenimel's  conduct,  incomprehensible. 
With  the  simple  faith  of  women,  that  faith  that  holds 
out  against  so  many  enlightenments  and  whose  artless 
mainspring  is  vanity,  she  had  believed  quite  firmly  that 
every  sweet  and  admiring  assurance  he  had  ever  given 


308  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

her  would  go  on  changelessly  and  indefinitely  holding 
good,  she  had  believed  she  knew  and  understood  him 
better  than  he  did  himself,  and  that  at  any  time  she 
wanted  to  she  had  only  to  reach  out  her  hand  to  be 
able  to  help  herself  to  more  of  his  love.  This  faith 
in  herself  and  in  her  power,  if  she  really  wished,  to 
charm  him,  she  called  having  faith  in  him.  It  took  six 
weeks  of  steadily  continued  mild  indifference  on  Herr 
Dremmel's  part,  of  placid  imperviousness  to  all  ap- 
proaches of  an  affectionate  nature,  of  the  most  obvious 
keen  relish  in  his  work,  keener  than  he  had  yet  shown, 
to  reveal  the  truth  at  last  to  her;  and  greatly  was  she 
astonished.  He  was  happy,  and  he  was  happy  without 
her!  "And  that,"  said  Ingeborg,  unable  to  resist  the 
conclusion  pressed  upon  her,  "isn't  love." 

She  stopped  a  moment  beneath  the  gently  dripping 
trees  and  took  off  her  knitted  cap  and  shook  it  dry,  for 
she  had  inadvertently  brushed  against  an  overhanging 
branch  on  which  last  summer's  leaves  still  wetly  clung. 

She  pulled  out  her  handkerchief  and  rubbed  her 
cap  thoughtfully.  It  had  been  raining  all  the  morning, 
and  now  late  in  the  afternoon  the  garden  was  a  quiet 
grey  place  of  fallen  leaves  and  gathering  dusk  and 
occasional  small  shakings  of  wet  off  the  trees  when 
a  silent  bird  perched  on  the  sodden  branches.  Some 
drops  fell  on  her  bare  head  while  she  was  drying  her 
cap.  She  put  up  her  hand  mechanically  and  rubbed 
them  off.  She  stood  wiping  her  cap  long  after  it  was 
dry,  absorbed  in  thought. 

"I  don't  know  what  it  is,"  she  said  presently,  half 
aloud,  "  but  I  do  know  what  it  isn't." 

She  put  on  her  cap  again,  pulling  it  over  her  ears 
with  both  hands  and  much  care,  and  staring  while  she 
did  it  at  a  slug  in  the  path  in  front  of  her. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  309 

"And  what  it  isn't,"  she  said  after  another  interval, 
shaking  her  head  and  screwing  up  her  face  into  an 
expression  of  profoundest  negation,  "  is  love." 

"  Well"  she  added,  deeply  astonished. 

Then,  with  a  flash  of  insight,  "  It's  because  he  works." 

Then,  with  a  quick  desire  to  cover  up  the  wound  to 
her  vanity,  "If  he  didn't  get  lost  in  his  work  he'd  re- 
member he  loves  me — it's  only  that  he  forgets" 

Then,  with  a  white  flare  of  candour,  "He's  a  bigger 
thing  than  I  am." 

Then,  with  the  old  eagerness  to  help,  "So  it's  my  busi- 
ness to  see  that  he  can  be  big  in  happy  peace." 

Then,  remembrance  smiting  her  with  its  flat,  cold 
hand,  "But  he  is  happy." 

Then,  "So  where  do  I  come  in?" 

Then,  with  a  great,  frank  acceptance  of  the  truth, 
"I  don't  come  in." 

Then,  swept  by  swift,  indignant  honesty,  'Why 
should  I  want  to  come  in?  What  is  all  this  coming 
in?  Oh" — she  stamped  her  foot — "the  simple  fact, 
the  naked  fact  when  I've  pulled  all  the  silly  clothes  off, 
is  that  I  only  want  him  to  be  happy  if  it's  I  who  make 

him  happy,  and  I'm  nothing  but  a — I'm  just  a " 

She  twisted  round  on  her  heels,  her  arms  flung  out,  in 
search  of  the  exact  raw  word — "I'm  nothing  but  just 
a  common  tyrant." 

At  tea-time  her  condition  can  best,  though  yet  im- 
perfectly, be  described  as  chastened. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

NEVERTHELESS,  though  she  tried  to  face  it 
squarely  and  help  herself  by  indignation  at  her 
own  selfish  vanity,  she  felt  a  great  emptiness 
round  her,  a  great  chill. 

It  was  impossible  to  get  used  all  at  once  to  this  new 
knowledge,  so  astonishing  after  seven  years  of  convic- 
tion that  one  was  loved,  and  so  astonishing  when  one 
remembered  that  as  recently  as  August — one  could 
positively  count  the  days — just  coming  home  again 
after  an  absence  had  drawn  forth  from  Robert  any 
number  of  manifestations  of  it.  It  had  the  suddenness 
and  completeness  of  the  switching  off  of  light.  A 
second  before,  one  was  illuminated;  another  second, 
and  one  was  groping  in  the  dark.  For  she  did  grope. 
She  was  groping  for  reasons.  It  seemed  for  a  long 
time  so  incredible  that  her  entire  importance  and  in- 
terest as  a  human  being  should  depend  on  whether  she 
was  or  was  not  what  he  called  a  true  wife  that  she  pre- 
ferred to  go  on  groping  rather  than  take  hold  of  this 
as  an  explanation. 

She  had  been  so  sure  of  Robert.  She  had  been  so 
familiar  with  him  and  unafraid.  When  she  thought 
of  her  days  at  home,  of  her  abject  fear  of  her  father,  of 
her  insignificance,  she  felt  that  Robert's  love  and  ad- 
miration had  lifted  her  up  from  being  a  creeping  thing 
to  being  a  creature  with  quite  bright  brave  wings.  He 
had  come  suddenly  into  her  life  and  told  her  she  was  a 

310 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  311 

susses  Kleines:  and  behold  she  became  a  susses  Kleines. 
And  now  he  didn't  think  her  even  that  any  more;  he 
had  dropped  her  again,  and  she  was  already  falling 
back  into  the  old  state  of  timidity  towards  the  man  in 
the  house. 

She  turned  to  the  children  and  the  housekeeping 
and  to  a  search  for  something  she  could  do  in  the  parish, 
so  that  at  least  while  she  was  making  efforts  to  clear  her 
confusion  about  Robert  she  might  not  be  wasting  time. 
If  she  was  no  use  to  him  she  might  be  of  use  to  the  less 
independent.  She  was  entirely  humble  at  this  moment, 
and  would  have  thanked  a  dog  if  it  had  been  so  kind  as 
to  allow  her  to  persuade  it  to  wag  its  tail.  It  had  al- 
ways been  her  hope  throughout  each  of  her  illnesses 
that  presently  when  that  one  was  over  she  would  get 
up  and  begin  to  do  good,  and  now  here  she  was,  finally 
up,  with  two  children  who  had  not  yethadmuch  mother, 
two  servants  whose  lives  might  perhaps  be  made  more 
interesting,  a  whole  field  outside  her  gates  for  practise 
in  deeds  of  mercy,  and  enormous  tracts  of  time  on  her 
hands.     All  she  had  to  do  was  to  begin. 

But  it  was  rather  like  an  over-delayed  resurrection. 
Things  had  filled  up.  Everybody  seemed  used  to  being 
left  alone,  and  such  a  thing  as  district-visiting,  so  famil- 
iar to  a  person  bred  in  Redchester,  was  unknown  in 
East  Prussia.  The  wife  of  a  country  pastor  had  as 
many  duties  in  her  own  house  as  one  woman  could 
perform  in  a  day,  and  nobody  expected  to  see  her 
going  about  into  other  houses  consoling  and  alleviating. 
Also,  the  peasants  thought,  why  should  one  be  consoled 
and  alleviated?  The  social  difference  between  the 
peasant  and  the  pastor  was  so  small  and  rested  so 
often  only  on  education  that  it  would  have  appeared 
equally  natural,  if  the  thing  could  from  any  point  of 


312  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

view  have  been  made  natural,  for  the  wife  of  the  peasant 
to  go  and  console  and  alleviate  the  parsonage.  Who 
wanted  sympathy  in  Kokensee?  Certainly  not  the  men, 
and  the  women  were  too  busy  with  family  cares,  those 
many  crushing  cares  that  yet  kept  them  interested  and 
alive,  to  have  time  for  consolations.  And  those  with 
most  cares,  most  children  who  died,  most  internal  com- 
plaints, most  gloom  and  weariness,  achieved  just  be- 
cause of  these  things  almost  as  much  distinction  and 
popularity  in  the  village  as  those  with  most  money. 
Ingeborg  herself  was  popular  so  long  as  her  children 
were  drowned  out  of  punts,  or  died  of  mumps,  or  were 
stillborn;  but  now  that  nothing  happened  to  her  and 
she  went  about,  after  having  had  six  of  them,  still 
straight  and  slender,  Kokensee  regarded  her  coldly  and 
with  distrust.  Doing  nothing  for  anybody  on  a  sofa  in 
an  untidy  black  tea-gown  she  had  been  respected.  Trim 
and  anxious  to  be  of  use  she  was  disapproved  of. 

When  she  went  round  to  try  to  interest  the  women  in 
the  getting  up  of  little  gatherings  that  were  to  brighten 
the  parish  once  a  fortnight  during  the  winter  months, 
they  shook  their  heads  over  their  washtubs  and  told 
each  other  after  she  had  gone  that  it  was  because  she 
kept  two  servants.  Hausfraus  who  did  not  do  their 
own  work,  they  said,  shaking  their  heads  with  many 
ja,  ja's,  were  sure  to  get  into  mischief.  All  they  asked 
of  the  pastor's  wife  was  that  she  should  attend  to  her 
own  business  and  let  them  attend  to  theirs.  They  did 
not  walk  into  her  living-room;  why  should  she  walk  into 
theirs?  They  did  not  want  to  brighten  her  winter; 
why  should  she  want  to  brighten  theirs?  She  should 
take  example  from  her  husband,  they  said,  who  never 
visited  anybody.  But  a  Frau  who  kept  two  servants 
and  who  after  six  children  still  wore   skirts   shorter 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  313 

than  a  Confirmation  candidate's — ja,  ja,  das  hommt 
da  von. 

And  things  had  filled  up  at  home.  Rosa  and  the 
cook  had  been  used  so  long  to  managing  alone,  and  were 
so  completely  obsessed  by  the  idea  that  the  Frau  Pastor 
was  half  dead  and  that  her  one  real  function  was  to  lie 
down,  that  they  regarded  her  suddenly  frequent  ap- 
pearances in  the  kitchen  with  the  uneasiness  and 
discomfort  with  which  they  would  have  regarded  the 
appearances  of  a  ghost.  No  more  than  if  she  had  been  a 
ghost  did  they  know  what  to  do  with  her.  She  did  not 
seem  real,  separated  from  her  bedroom  and  her  beef -tea. 
They  could  not  work  with  her.  She  would  make  them 
jump  when,  on  looking  up,  they  saw  her  in  their  midst, 
having  come  in  unheard  with  her  strange  lightness  of 
movement.  Their  nerves  were  shaken  when  they  dis- 
covered her  on  her  knees  in  odd  corners  of  the  house 
doing  things  with  dusters.  To  see  her  prodding  pota- 
toes over  the  fire,  and  weighing  meat,  and  approaching 
onions  familiarly  made  them  creep. 

It  was  like  some  dreadful  miracle. 

It  was  like,  said  Rosa,  whispering,  being  obliged  to 
cook  dinners  and  make  beds  with  the  help  of — side  by 
side  with 

'With  what  then?"  cried  the  cook,  pretending  cour- 
age but  catching  fear  from  Rosa's  face. 

"  Mit  einem  Lazarus,"  whispered  Rosa,  behind  her 
hand. 

The  cook  shrieked. 

They  did  not,  however,  give  notice,  being  good  girls 
and  prepared  to  bear  much,  till  they  saw  their  names 
in  red  ink  in  one  of  the  squares  ruled  on  a  sheet  of 
paper  the  Frau  Pastor  pinned  up  on  the  sitting-room 
wall  above  her  writing-table. 


314  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

For  a  day  or  two  they  were  filled  with  nameless 
horror  because  the  ink  was  red.  Then,  when  they  dis- 
covered what  the  numbers  against  the  square,  3 — 4, 
meant,  the  horror  was  swept  away  in  indignation,  for  it 
was  the  hour  in  the  afternoon  in  which  they  usually 
mended  or  knitted  and  gossiped  together,  and  it  ap- 
peared that  the  Frau  Pastor  intended  to  come  and 
sit  with  them  during  this  hour  and  read  aloud. 

"Nice  books  are  so — so  nice,"  said  Ingeborg,  explain- 
ing her  idea.     "  Don't  you  think  you'll  like  nice  books?  " 

She  faltered  a  little,  because  of  the  expression  on  their 
faces. 

"There  is  the  pig,"  said  the  cook  desperately. 

"The  pig?" 

"It  has  to  be  fed  between  three  and  four." 

"Oh,  but  we're  not  going  to  mind  things  like  pigs!'' 
said  Ingeborg  with  a  slightly  laboured  brightness. 

The  next  day  they  gave  notice. 

But  the  plan  pinned  up  in  the  parlour  had  nothing, 
except  during  this  one  hour,  to  do  with  Rosa  and  the 
cook;  it  had  been  drawn  up  solely  on  behalf  of  Robertlet 
and  Ditti. 

Ingeborg  had  pored  over  it  for  days,  making  careful 
squares  with  a  ruler  and  doing  all  the  principal  words 
in  red  ink,  her  hair  touzled  by  the  stresses  of  thinking  out, 
and  her  cheeks  flushed.  The  winter  was  upon  them, 
and  already  rain  and  gales  made  being  out  of  doors 
impossible  except  for  one  daily  courageous  trudge  after 
dinner  with  the  children  in  waterproofs  and  goloshes, 
and  she  thought  that  with  a  little  arranging  she  might 
shorten  and  brighten  the  long  months  to  the  spring. 
The  children  were  so  passive.  They  seemed  hardly 
conscious,  she  thought,  of  the  world  round  them. 
Wouldn't  they  enjoy  themselves  more  if  they  could  be 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  315 

taught  to  look  at  things?  Their  resemblance  to  the 
elder  Frau  Dremmel  was  remarkable,  it  is  true,  but  of 
course  only  superficial.  Why  they  were  apathetic  was 
because  they  had  had  so  little  mother  in  their  lives. 
She  had  only  been  able  to  teach  them  their  prayers  and 
their  grace,  and  beyond  that  had  had  to  leave  them  to 
God.  Now,  however,  she  could  take  over  her  charge 
again,  and  teach  them  things  that  would  make  them 
lissom,  quick,  interested,  and  gay. 

"What  would  make  Robertlet  and  Ditti  lissom,  quick, 
interested,  and  gay?  She  pored  profoundly  over  this 
question,  and  was  steeped  in  red  ink  and  with  the  end 
of  her  pen  bitten  off  and  the  floor  white  with  torn-up 
plans  before  she  had  answered  it. 

At  the  end  of  the  winter  she  thought  she  could  not 
have  answered  it  right.  There  was  something  wrong 
with  education.  The  children  had  been  immensely  pa- 
tient. They  had  borne  immensely  with  their  mother. 
Yet  by  the  end  of  a  whole  winter's  application  of  the 
plan  they  knew  only  how  cats  and  dogs  were  spelt,  and 
the  sole  wonder  that  they  felt  after  six  months'  parental 
effort  to  stir  them  to  that  important  preliminary  to 
knowledge  was  a  dim  surprise  that  such  familiar  beasts 
should  need  spelling. 

It  was  very  unfortunate,  but  they  could  not  be  got, 
for  instance,  to  like  the  heavenly  bodies.  Useless  for 
their  mother  to  press  them  upon  their  notice  on  clear 
evenings  when  all  the  sky  was  a-blink.  From  first  to 
last  they  saw  nothing  in  the  sunsets  that  lit  the  white 
winter  world  into  a  vast  cave  of  colour  except  a  sign 
that  it  must  be  tea-time.  Not  once  could  they  be 
induced  to  shudder  at  the  thought,  on  great  starry 
nights,  of  infinite  space.  They  were  unmoved  by  the 
information  that  they  were  being  hurled  at  an  incred- 


316  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

ible  speed  through  it;  and  they  didn't  mind  the  moon 
being  all  those  miles  away.  In  the  dancing  class  it  was 
Ingeborg  who  danced.  In  the  gymnastic  class  it  was 
she  who  grew  lissom.  The  English  and  German  Chat- 
ting, owing  to  an  absence  in  Robertlet  and  Ditti  of 
any  of  the  ingredients  of  chat,  was  a  monologue;  and 
for  the  course  on  Introductions  to  Insects  Collected  in  the 
House  it  was  Ingeborg  who  caught  the  flies. 

They  were,  however,  very  good.  Nothing  to  which 
they  were  subjected  altered  that.  When  their  mother 
in  spite  of  discouragements  went  on  bravely,  so  did 
they.  When  out  of  doors  she  snowballed  them  they 
stood  patiently  till  she  had  done.  She  showed  them 
how  to  make  a  snow  man,  and  they  did  not  complain. 
She  gave  them  little  sledges  at  Christmas,  and  explained 
the  emotions  to  be  extracted  from  these  objects  by 
sliding  on  them  swiftly  down  slopes,  and  they  bore  her 
no  ill-will  when,  having  slid,  they  fell  off,  but  quietly 
preferred  the  level  garden  paths  and  drew  each  other  in 
turn  on  one  sledge  up  and  down  them,  while  their 
mother  on  the  other  sledge  did  the  sorts  of  things  they 
had  come  to  expect  from  mothers,  and  kept  on  dis- 
appearing over  the  brink  of  the  slope  to  the  frozen  lake 
head  first  and  face  downward. 

"It's  very  difficult,"  thought  Ingeborg  sometimes, 
as  the  winter  dragged  on. 

There  she  was,  heavy  with  facts  about  flies  and  stars 
and  distances  extracted  in  the  evenings  during  her 
preparation  hours  from  the  "Encyclopaedia  Britannica" 
which  had  been  procured  from  London  for  the  purpose 
— the  parsonage  groaned  beneath  it — and  longing  to 
unload  them,  and  she  was  not  able  to  because  the  two 
vessels  which  ought  to  have  received  them  were  fitted  so 
impenetrably  with  lids. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  317 

They  seemed  to  grow,  if  anything,  more  lidded. 
Quieter  and  quieter.  The  hour  at  the  end  of  the  day, 
marked  on  the  plan  Lap,  an  hour  she  had  thought 
might  easily  become  beautiful,  something  her  children 
would  remember  years  hence,  which  was  to  have  been 
all  white  intimacy,  with  kisses  and  talks  about  angels 
and  the  best  and  quickest  ways  of  getting  to  heaven 
while  Robertlet  sat  in  the  lap  on  Mondays,  Wednesdays, 
and  Fridays,  and  Ditti  sat  in  it  on  Tuesdays,  Thursdays, 
and  Saturdays  (there  being  scarcity  in  laps),  was 
from  the  beginning  an  hour  of  semi-somnolence  for  the 
children,  of  staring  sleepily  into  the  glow  of  the  stove, 
resting  while  they  waited  for  what  their  mother  would 
do  or  say  next. 

Ingeborg  was  inclined  to  be  disheartened  at  this 
hour.  It  was  the  last  one  of  the  children's  day,  and 
the  day  had  been  long.  There  was  the  firelight,  the 
mother's  lap  and  knee,  the  mother  herself  ready  to  kiss 
and  be  confided  in  and  more  than  ready  to  confide  in 
her  turn  those  discoveries  she  had  made  in  the  regions 
of  science,  and  nothing  happened.  Robertlet  and  Ditti 
either  stared  fixedly  at  the  glow  from  the  open  stove 
door  or  at  Ingeborg  herself;  but  whichever  they  stared 
at  they  did  it  in  silence. 

"What  are  you  thinking  of?"  she  would  ask  them 
sometimes, disturbing  their dreamlessdream, their  happy 
freedom  from  thought.  And  then  together  they  would 
answer,  "Nothing." 

"No,  but  tell  me  really — you  can't  really  think  of 
nothing.  It's  impossible.  Nothing  is" —  she  floun- 
dered— "is  always  something " 

But  the  next  time  she  asked  the  same  question  they 
answered  with  one  voice  just  as  before,  "Nothing." 

Then   it   occurred   to   her   that   perhaps   they   were 


318  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

having  too  much  mother.  This  also  happened  in  the 
hour  called  Lap. 

"A  mother,"  she  reflected,  both  her  arms  round  her 
children  according  to  plan,  "must  often  be  rather  a  nui- 
sance." 

She  looked  down  with  a  new  sympathy  at  Ditti's 
head  reposing,  also  according  to  plan,  on  her  shoulder. 

"Especially  if  she's  a  devoted  mother." 

She  laid  her  cheek  on  the  black  smooth  hair,  parted 
and  pigtailed  and  as  unlike  Robert's  fair  furry  stuff  or 
her  own  as  it  was  like  the  elder  Frau  Dremmel's. 

"A  devoted  mother,"  continued  Ingeborg  to  herself, 
her  eyes  on  the  glowing  heart  of  the  stove  and  her 
cheek  on  Ditti's  head,  "is  one  who  gives  up  all  her 
time  to  trying  to  make  her  children  different." 

"7'm  a  devoted  mother,"  she  added,  after  a  pause  in 
which  she  had  faced  her  conscience. 

"How  dreadful!"  she  thought. 

She  began  to  kiss  Ditti's  head  very  softly. 

"How,  too,  dreadful  to  be  in  the  power  of  somebody 
different;  of  somebody  quick  if  you're  not  quick,  or  dull 
if  you're  not  dull,  and  anyhow  so  old,  so  very  old  com- 
pared to  you,  and  have  to  be  made  like  her!  How 
would  I  like  being  in  my  mother-in-law's  power,  with 
years  and  years  for  her  to  work  at  forcing  me  to 
be  what  she'd  think  I  ought  to  be?  And  what 
she'd  think  I  ought  to  be  would  be  herself,  what  she 
tries  to  be.  Of  course.  You  can't  think  outside  your- 
self." 

She  drew  the  children  tighter.  'You  poor  little 
things ! "  she  exclaimed  aloud,  suddenly  overcome  by  the 
vision  of  what  it  must  be  like  to  have  to  put  up  with  a 
person  so  fundamentally  alien  through  a  whole  winter; 
and  she  kissed  them  one  after  the  other,  holding  their 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  319 

faces  close  to  hers  with  her  hands  against  their  cheeks 
in  a  passion  of  apology. 

Even  to  that  exclamation,  a  quite  new  one  in  a 
quite  new  voice,  they  said  nothing,  but  waited  patiently 
for  what  would  no  doubt  happen  next. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

WHAT  happened  next  was  that  they  went  to 
school. 
Just  as  Ingeborg  was  beginning  to  ask  herself 
rather  shy  questions — for  she  was  very  full  of  respects 
— about  the  value  of  education  and  the  claims  of  free 
development,  the  State  stepped  in  and  swept  Robertlet 
and  Ditti  away  from  her  into  its  competent  keeping. 
In  an  instant,  so  it  seemed  to  her  afterward  when  in 
the  empty  house  she  had  nothing  to  do  but  put  away 
their  traces,  she  was  bereft. 

'  You  never  told  me  this  is  what  happens  to  mothers," 
she  said  to  Herr  Dremmel  the  day  the  brief  order  from 
the  Chief  Inspector  of  Schools  arrived. 

Herr  Dremmel,  who  was  annoyed  that  he  should 
have  forgotten  his  parental  and  civic  duties,  and  still 
more  annoyed,  it  being  April  and  his  fields  needing 
much  attention  as  a  new-born  infant,  or  a  young 
woman  one  wishes,  impelled  by  amorous  motives,  to 
marry,  that  there  should  be  parental  and  civic  duties 
to  forget,  was  short  with  her. 

"Every  German  of  six  has  to  be  educated,"  he  said. 

"But  they  are  being  educated,"  said  Ingeborg,  her 
mind  weighted  with  all  she  herself  had  learned. 

He  waved  her  aside. 

"But,  Robert — my  children — surely  there's  some  way 
of  educating  them  besides  sending  them  away  from  me?  " 

He  continued  to  wave  her  aside. 

320 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  321 

There  was  no  doubt  about  it:  the  children  had  to 
go,  and  they  went. 

Of  the  alternatives,  their  being  taught  at  home  by 
a  person  with  Government  certificates,  or  attending 
the  village  school,  Herr  Dremmel  would  not  hear.  He 
was  having  differences  of  a  personal  nature  with  the 
village  schoolmaster,  who  refused  with  a  steadiness  that 
annoyed  Herr  Dremmel  to  recognise  that  he  was  a 
Schafskopf,  while  Herr  Dremmel  held,  and  patiently 
explained,  that  a  person  who  is  born  a  Schafskopf 
should  be  simple  and  frank  about  it,  and  not  persist 
in  behaving  as  if  he  were  not  one;  and  as  for  a  teacher 
in  the  house,  that  was  altogether  impossible,  because 
there  was  no  room. 

"There's  the  laboratory,"  said  Ingeborg  recklessly, 
to  whom  anything  seemed  better  than  letting  her  chil- 
dren go. 

"The  lab—?" 

"Only  to  sleep  in,"  she  eagerly  explained,  "just 
sleep  in,  you  know.  The  teacher  needn't  be  there  at  all 
in  the  daytime,  for  instance." 

"Ingeborg "    began    Herr    Dremmel;    then    he 

thought  better  of  it,  and  merely  held  out  his  cup  for 
more  tea.  Women  were  really  much  to  be  pitied.  Their 
entire  inability  to  reach  even  an  elementary  conception 
of  values     .     .     . 

The  children  went  to  school  in  Meuk.  They  lodged 
with  their  grandmother,  and  were  to  come  home  on 
those  vague  Sundays  when  the  weather  was  good  and 
Herr  Dremmel  did  not  require  the  horses.  Ingeborg 
could  not  believe  in  such  a  complete  sweep  out  of  her 
life.  She  loved  Robertlet  and  Ditti  with  an  extreme 
and  odd  tenderness.  There  was  self-reproach  in  it,  a 
passionate  desire  to  protect.     It  was  the  love  some- 


322  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

times  found  in  those  who  have  to  do  all  the  loving  by 
themselves.  It  was  an  acute  and  quivering  thing. 
After  her  experiences  in  the  winter  she  had  doubts 
whether  education  at  present  was  what  they  wanted. 
It  was  not  school  they  wanted,  she  thought,  but  to  run 
wild.  She  knew  it  would  have  been  perhaps  difficult 
to  get  them  to  run  in  this  manner,  but  thought  if  she  had 
had  them  a  little  longer  and  had  thoroughly  revised 
her  plan,  purging  it  of  science  and  filling  them  up  in- 
stead with  different  forms  of  wildness,  she  might 
eventually  have  induced  them  to.  There  could  have 
been  a  carefully  graduated  course  in  wildness,  she 
thought,  beginning  quietly  with  weeding  paths,  and 
going  on  by  steps  of  ever-increasing  abandonment  to 
tree-climbing,  bird-nesting,  and  midnight  raids  on 
apples. 

And  while  she  wandered  about  the  deserted  garden 
and  was  desolate,  Robertlet  and  Ditti,  safe  in  their 
grandmother's  house,  were  having  the  most  beautiful 
dumplings  every  day  for  dinner  that  seemed  to  fit  into 
each  part  of  them  as  warmly  and  neatly  as  though 
they  were  bits  of  their  own  bodies  come  back,  after 
having  been  artificially  separated,  to  fill  them  with  a  de- 
licious hot  contentment,  and  their  grandmother  was  say- 
ing to  them  at  regular  intervals  with  a  raised  forefinger: 
"My  children,  never  forget  that  you  are  Germans." 

There  was  now  nothing  left  for  Ingeborg  but,  as 
she  told  Herr  Dremmel  the  first  Sunday  Robertlet 
and  Ditti  had  been  coming  home  and  then  for  some 
obscure  reason  did  not  come,  thrusting  the  information 
tactlessly  at  tea-time  between  his  attention  and  his 
book,  her  own  inside. 

"After  all,"  she  said,  as  usual  quite  suddenly,  break- 
ing a  valuable  silence,  "there's  still  me." 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  323 

Herr  Dremmel  said  nothing,  for  it  was  one  of  those 
statements  of  fact  that  luckily  do  not  require  an  an- 
swer. 

"Nobody,"  said  Ingeborg,  throwing  her  head  back 
a  little,  "can  take  that  away." 

Herr  Dremmel  said  nothing  to  that  either,  chiefly 
because  he  did  not  want  to.  He  had  no  time  nor 
desire  to  guess  at  meanings  which  were,  no  doubt,  after 
all  not  there. 

"Whatever  happens,"  she  said,  "I've  still  got  my 
own  inside." 

"Ingeborg,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  "I  will  not  ask 
you  what  you  mean  in  case  you  should  tell  me." 

There  was  a  drought  going  on,  and  Herr  Dremmel, 
who  justly  prided  himself  on  his  sweetness  of  temper, 
was  not  as  patient  as  usual;  so  Ingeborg,  silenced, 
went  into  the  garden  where  the  drought  was  making 
the  world  glow  and  shimmer,  and  reflected  that  on  the 
object  she  called  her  inside  alone  now  depended  her 
happiness. 

It  was  useless  to  depend  on  others;  it  was  useless 
to  depend,  as  she  had  done  in  her  ridiculous  vanity, 
on  others  depending  on  her.  After  all,  each  year  had 
a  May  in  it  and  the  birds  sang.  She  would  send  away 
the  extra  servant  and  do  the  work  herself,  as  she  used 
to  at  first.  She  would  begin  again  to  develop  her 
intelligence,  and  write  that  evening  to  London  for 
the  Spectator.  Something, she  remembered, had  warmed 
and  quickened  her  all  those  years  ago  after  her  meet- 
ing with  Ingram — was  it  the  Spectator  ?  She  would 
make  plans.  She  would  draw  up  plans  in  red  ink. 
There  were  a  thousand  things  she  might  study.  There 
were  languages. 

She  walked   up   and   down   the  garden.     If  she  let 


324  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

herself  be  beaten  back  this  time  into  neglect  of  herself 
and  indifference  she  would  be  done  for.  There  was  no 
one  to  save  her.  She  would  lapse  and  lapse;  and  not 
into  fatnesses  and  peace  like  other  women  in  Germany 
lopped  of  their  children,  and  of  a  class  above  the  class 
that  stood  at  that  instrument  of  salvation,  its  own 
washtub,  not  into  afternoon  slumbers  and  benevolences 
of  a  woolly  nature  that  kept  one's  hand  knitting  while 
one's  brains  went  to  sleep  till  presently  one  was  dead, 
but  into  something  fretful  and  nipped,  with  a  little 
shrivelled,  skinny,  steadily  dwindling  mind. 

Her  eyes  grew  very  wide  at  this  dreadful  picture. 
Now  was  the  moment,  she  thought,  turning  away  from 
it  quickly,  now  that  there  had  come  this  pause  in  her 
life,  to  go  over  to  England  for  a  visit  and  see  her  re- 
lations and  talk  and  come  back  refreshed  to  a  new 
chapter  of  existence  in  Kokensee.  She  had  not  been 
out  of  Kokensee,  except  to  Zoppot,  since  her  marriage, 
and  her  throat  tightened  at  the  thought  of  England. 
But  the  Bishop  had  never  forgiven  her  marriage;  and 
her  having  had  six  children  had  also,  it  seemed  from 
her  mother's  letters  when  there  used  to  be  letters, 
made  an  unfavourable  impression  on  him.  It  had,  in 
fact,  upset  him.  He  had  considered  such  conduct  too 
distinctively  German  to  be  passed  over;  and  when  she 
added  to  the  error  in  taste  of  having  had  them  the 
further  error  or  rather  negligence — it  must  have  been 
criminal,  thought  the  Bishop— of  not  being  able  to 
keep  them  alive,  the  Palace,  after  having  four  times 
with  an  increasing  severity  condoled,  withdrew  into  a 
disapproval  so  profound  that  it  could  only  express  it- 
self adequately  by  silence. 

And  a  stay  with  Judith  was  out  of  the  question. 
One  had  for  a  stay  with  Judith  to  have  clothes,  and 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  325 

she  had  no  clothes;  at  least,  none  newer  than  eight 
years  old — her  immense  unworn  trousseau  dogged  her 
through  the  years — for  Judith  gave  many  parties  at 
the  Master's  Lodge,  brilliant  gatherings,  her  mother 
called  them  in  her  rare  letters,  where  London,  come 
down  on  purpose  and  expressed  in  Prime  and  other 
ministers  as  well  as  in  the  fine  flower  of  the  aristocracy 
and  a  few  selected  fragrances  from  the  world  of  litera- 
ture and  art — once  her  mother  wrote  that  Ingrain, 
the  great  painter,  had  been  at  the  last  party,  and  was 
so  much  enslaved  by  Judith's  loveliness  that  he  had 
asked  as  a  favour  to  be  allowed  to  paint  her — sat  at 
Judith's  feet. 

No;  England  was  not  for  her.  Her  place  was  in 
Kokensee,  and  her  business  now  was  to  do  what  her 
governesses  used  to  call  improve  her  mind.  Perhaps 
if  she  improved  it  enough  Robert  would  talk  to  her 
again  sometimes,  and  this  time  not  on  the  Little  Treas- 
ure basis  but  on  the  solid  one  of  intellectual  companion- 
ship. Might  she  not  end  by  being  a  real  helpmeet 
to  him?  Somebody  who  would  gradually  learn  to  be 
quiet  and  analytical  and  artful  with  grains? 

She  went  indoors  and  wrote  then  and  there  to 
London,  renewing  the  long-ended  subscriptions  to 
the  Times,  Spectator,  Clarion,  IlibberVs  Journal,  and 
the  rest.  She  asked  for  a  catalogue  of  the  newest 
publications  that  were  not  novels — her  determination 
was  too  serious  just  then  for  novels — ordered  Herbert 
Spencer's  "  First  Principles,"  for  she  felt  she  would  like 
to  have  some  principles,  especially  first  ones,  and  said 
she  would  be  glad  of  any  little  hint  the  news-agent 
could  give  her  as  to  what  he  thought  a  married  lady 
ought  to  know;  and  she  spent  the  rest  of  the  evening 
and  the  two  following  days  laying  the  foundations  of 


326  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

intellectual  companionship  by  looking  up  the  article 
Manure  in  the  "Encyclopaedia  Britannica"  and  para- 
phrasing it  into  conversational  observations  that 
sounded  to  her  so  clever  when  she  tried  them  on  Herr 
Dremmel  three  days  later  at  tea-time  that  she  was 
astonished  herself. 

She  was  still  more  astonished  when  Herr  Dremmel, 
having  listened,  remarked  that  her  facts  were  wrong. 

"But  they  can't  possibly "  she  began;  then  broke 

off,  feeling  the  awkwardness  of  a  position  in  which  one 
was  unable  to  argue  without  at  once  revealing  the 
"Encyclopaedia." 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

THIS  was  in  May.  By  the  end  of  the  following 
May  Ingeborg  had  read  so  much  that  she  felt 
quite  uncomfortable. 
It  had  been  a  fine  confused  reading,  in  which  Ruskin 
jostled  Mr.  Roger  Fry  and  Shelley  lingered,  as  it  were, 
in  the  lap  of  Mr.  Masefield.  The  news-agent,  who 
must  have  lived  chiefly  a  great  many  years  before, 
steadily  sent  her  mid,  early,  and  pre-Victorian  litera- 
ture; and  she,  ordering  on  her  own  account  books 
advertised  in  the  weekly  papers,  found  herself  as  a 
result  one  day  in  the  placid  arms  of  the  Lake  Poets, 
and  the  next  being  disciplined  by  Mr.  Marinetti,  one 
day  ambling  unconcernedly  with  Lamb,  and  the  next 
caught  in  the  exquisite  intricacies  of  Mr.  Henry  James. 
She  read  books  of  travel,  she  learned  poetry  by  heart, 
she  grew  skilful  at  combining  her  studies  with  her 
cooking;  and  propping  up  Keats  on  the  dresser  could 
run  to  him  for  a  fresh  line  in  the  very  middle  of  the 
pudding  almost  without  the  pudding  minding.  And 
since  she  loved  to  hear  the  beautiful  words  she  learned 
aloud,  and  the  kitchen  was  full  of  a  pleasant  buzzing, 
a  murmurous  sound  of  sonnets  as  well  as  flies,  to  which 
the  servant  got  used  in  time. 

But  though  she  set  about  this  new  life  with  solemnity 

-for  was  she  not  a  lopped  and  lonely  woman  whose 

husband  had  left  off  loving  her  and  whose  children 

had  been  taken  away? — cheerfulness  kept  on  creep- 

327 


328  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

ing  in.  The  chief  obstacle  to  any  sort  of  continued 
gloom  was  that  there  was  a  morning  to  every  day. 
Also  she  had  enthusiasms,  those  most  uplifting  and 
outlifting  from  oneself  of  spiritual  attitudes,  and  de- 
veloped a  pretty  talent  for  tingling.  She  would  tingle 
on  the  least  provocation,  with  joy  over  a  poem,  with 
admiration  over  the  description  of  a  picture,  and  thrilled 
and  quivered  with  response  to  tales  of  Beauty — of 
the  beauty  of  the  cathedrals  in  France,  miracles  of 
coloured  glass  held  together  delicately  by  stone,  blown 
together,  she  could  only  think  from  the  descriptions,  in 
their  exquisite  fragility  by  the  breath  of  God  rather 
than  built  up  slowly  by  men's  hands;  of  the  beauty  of 
places,  the  lagoons  round  Venice  at  sunrise,  the  desert 
toward  evening;  of  the  beauty  of  love,  faithful,  splen- 
did, equal  love;  of  all  the  beauty  men  made  with  their 
hands,  little  spuddy  things  running  over  dead  stuff, 
blocks  of  stone,  bits  of  glass  and  canvas,  fashioning  and 
fashioning  till  at  last  there  was  the  vision,  pulled  out 
of  a  brain  and  caught  forever  into  the  glory  of  line 
and  colour.  She  longed  to  talk  about  the  wonderful 
and  stirring  and  vivid  things  life  outside  Kokensee 
seemed  to  flash  with.  What  must  it  be  like  to  talk  to 
people  who  knew  and  had  seen?  What  could  it  be 
like  to  see  for  oneself,  to  travel,  to  go  to  France  and  its 
cathedrals,  to  go  to  Italy  in  the  spring-time  when  the 
jewels  of  the  world  could  be  looked  at  in  a  setting  of 
clear  skies  and  generous  flowers?  Or  in  autumn,  when 
Kokensee  was  grey  and  tortured  with  rainstorms,  to  go 
away  there  into  serenity,  to  where  the  sun  burned  the 
chestnuts  golden  all  day  long  and  the  air  smelt  of 
ripened  grapes? 

And  she  «had  only  seen  the  Rigi. 

Well,  that  was  something;  and  it  seemed  somehow 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  329 

appropriate  for  a  pastor's  wife.  She  turned  again  to 
her  books.  What  she  had  was  very  good;  and  she  had 
found  an  old  woman  in  the  village  who  did  not  mind 
being  comforted,  so  that  added  to  everything  else  was 
now  the  joy  of  gratitude. 

It  seemed,  indeed,  that  she  was  to  have  a  run  of 
joys  that  spring,  for  besides  these  came  suddenly  yet 
another,  the  joy  so  long  dreamed  of  of  having  some  one 
to  talk  to.  And  such  a  some  one,  thought  Ingeborg, 
entirely  dazzled  by  her  good  fortune — for  it  was  Ingram. 

She  was  paddling  the  punt  as  usual  down  the  lake 
one  afternoon,  a  pile  of  books  at  her  feet,  when,  passing 
the  end  of  the  arm  of  reeds  that  stretched  out  round 
her  hidden  bay,  she  perceived  that  her  little  beach  was 
not  empty;  and  pausing  astonished  with  her  paddle 
arrested  in  the  air  to  look,  she  recognized  in  the  middle 
of  a  confusion  of  objects  strewn  round  him  that 
no  doubt  had  to  do  with  painting,  sitting  with  his 
elbows  on  his  drawn-up  knees  and  his  chin  in  his  hand, 
Ingram. 

He  was  doing  nothing:  just  staring.  She  came 
from  behind  the  arm  of  reeds,  half  drifting  along  noise- 
lessly out  towards  the  middle  of  the  lake,  straight  across 
his  line  of  sight. 

For  an  instant  he  stared  motionless,  while  she, 
holding  her  paddle  out  of  the  water,  stared  equally 
motionless  at  him.  Then  he  seized  his  sketching  book 
and  began  furiously  to  draw.  She  was  out  in  the  sun 
and  had  no  hat  on.  Her  hair  was  the  strangest  colour 
against  the  background  of  water  and  sky.  more  like  a 
larch  in  autumn  than  anything  he  could  think  of.  She 
seemed  the  vividest  thing,  suddenly  cleaving  the  pallors 
and  uncertainties  of  reeds  and  water  and  flecked  north- 
ern sky. 


330  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"Don't  move,"  he  shouted  in  what  he  supposed  was 
German,  sketching  violently. 

"So  it's  you?"  she  called  back  in  English,  and  her 
voice  sang. 

"Yes,  it's  me  all  right,"  he  said,  his  pencil  flying. 

He  did  not  recognise  her.  He  had  seen  too  many 
people  in  seven  years  to  keep  the  foggy  figure  of  that 
distant  November  evening  in  his  mind. 

"I'm  coming  in,"  she  called,  digging  her  paddle 
into  the  water. 

"Sit  still!"  he  shouted. 

"But  I  want  to  talk." 

"Sit  still!" 

She  sat  still,  watching  him,  unable  to  believe  her 
good  fortune.  If  he  were  only  here  again  for  a  single 
day  and  she  could  only  talk  to  him  for  a  single  hour, 
what  a  refreshment,  what  a  delight:  to  talk  in  Eng- 
lish; to  talk  to  some  one  who  had  painted  Judith; 
to  talk  to  some  one  so  wonderful;  to  talk  at  all!  She 
was  as  little  shy  as  a  person  stranded  on  a  desert  island 
would  be  of  anybody,  kings  included,  who  should  ap- 
pear after  years  on  the  solitary  beach. 

"Well?  "she  called, after  sitting  patiently  for  what  she 
felt  must  be  half  an  hour  but  which  was  five  minutes. 

He  did  not  answer,  absorbed  in  what  he  was  doing. 

She  waited  for  what  seemed  another  half-hour,  and 
then  turned  the  punt  in  the  direction  of  the  shore. 

"I'm  coming  in,"  she  called;  and  as  he  did  not  an- 
swer she  paddled  towards  the  bay. 

He  stared  at  her,  his  head  a  little  on  one  side,  as 
she  came  close.  "What  are  you  going  to  do?"  he 
asked,  seeing  she  was  manoeuvring  the  punt  into  the 
corner  under  the  oak-tree. 

"Land,"  said  Ingeborg. 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  331 

He  got  up  and  caught  hold  of  the  chain  fastened  to 
the  punt's  nose  and  dragged  it  up  the  beach. 

"How  do  you  do?"  she  said,  jumping  out  and  hold- 
ing out  her  hand.  "Mr.  Ingram,"  she  added,  looking 
up  at  him,  her  face  quite  solemn  with  pleasure. 

"Well,  now,  but  who  on  earth  are  you?"  he  asked, 
shaking  her  hand  and  staring.  Her  clothes,  now  that 
she  was  standing  up,  were  the  oddest  things,  recalling 
back  numbers  of  Punch.  "You're  not  staying  at  the 
Glambecks',  and  except  for  the  Glambecks  there  isn't 
anywhere  to  stay." 

"But  I  told  vou  I  was  the  pastor's  wife." 

"You  did?'' 

"Last  time.     Well,  and  I  still  am." 

"But  when  was  last  time?" 

"Don't  you  remember?  You  were  staying  with  the 
Glambecks  then,  too." 

"But  I  haven't  stayed  with  the  Glambecks  for  an 
eternity.     At  least  ten  years." 

"Seven,"  said  Ingeborg.  "Seven  and  a  half.  It  was 
in  November." 

"But  you  must  have  been  in  pinafores." 

"And  you  walked  down  the  avenue  with  me.  Don't 
vou  remember?" 

t/ 

"No,"  said  Ingram,  staring  at  her. 

"And  you  scolded  me  because  I  couldn't  walk  as  fast 
as  you  did.     Don't  you  remember?" 

"No,"  said  Ingrain. 

"And  you  said  I'd  run  to  seed  if  I  wasn't  careful. 
Don't  vou  remember?" 

"No,"  said  Ingrain. 

"And  I  had  on  my  grey  coat  and  skirt.  Don't  you 
remember?" 

"No,  no,  no,"  said  Ingram,    smiting    his    forehead, 


332  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"and  I  don't  believe  a  word  of  it.  You're  just  making 
it  up.  Look  here,"  he  said,  clearing  away  his  things 
to  make  room  for  her,  "sit  down  and  let  us  talk.  Are 
you  real?" 

"Yes,  and  I  live  at  Kbkensee,  just  round  the  corner 
behind  the  reeds.  But  I  told  you  that  before,"  said 
Ingeborg. 

"You  do  live?"  he  said,  pushing  his  things  aside. 
"You're  not  just  a  flame-headed  little  dream  that  will 
presently  disappear  again?" 

"My  name's  Dremmel.  Frau  Dremmel.  But  I  told 
you  that  before,  too." 

"The  things  a  man  forgets!"  he  exclaimed,  spreading 
a  silk  handkerchief  over  the  coarse  grass.  'There! 
Sit  on  that." 

'You're  laughing  at  me,"  she  said,  sitting  down,  "and 
I  don't  mind  a  bit.     I'm  much  too  glad  to  see  you." 

"If  I  laugh  it's  with  pleasure,"  he  said,  staring  at  the 
effect  of  her  against  the  pale  green  of  the  reeds — where 
had  he  seen  just  that  before,  that  Scandinavian  colour- 
ing, that  burning  sort  of  brightness  in  the  hair?  "It's 
so  amusing  of  you  to  be  Frau  anything." 

She  smiled  at  him  with  the  frankness  of  a  pleased  boy. 
'You're    very    nice,    you    know,"    he    said,    smiling 
back. 

"You  didn't  think  so  last  time.  You  called  me  your 
dear  lady,  and  asked  me  if  I  never  read." 

'Well,  and  didn't  you?"  he  said,  sitting  down,  too, 
but  a  little  way  off  so  that  he  could  get  her  effect  better. 

"Yes,  do  sit  down.  Then  I  shan't  be  so  dreadfully 
afraid  you're  going." 

"Why,  but  I've  only  just  found  you." 
"But  last  time  you  disappeared  almost  at  once  into 
the  fog,  and  you'd  only  just  found  me  then,"  she  said, 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  333 

her  hands  clasped  round  her  knees,  her  face  the  face  of 
the  entirely  happy. 

"After  all  I  seem  to  have  made  some  progress  in  seven 
years,"  he  said.     "I  apparently  couldn't  see  then." 

"No,  it  was  me.     I  was  very  invisible " 

"Invisible?" 

"Oh,  moth-eaten,  dilapidated,  dun-coloured.  And  I'd 
been  crying." 

"You?  Look  here,  nobody  with  your  kind  of  colour- 
ing should  ever  cry.  It's  a  sin.  It  would  be  most  dis- 
tressing, seriously,  if  you  were  ever  less  white  than  you 
are  at  this  moment." 

"See  how  nice  it  is  not  to  be  a  painter,"  said  Ingeborg. 
'I  don't  mind  a  bit  if  you're  white  or  not  so  long  as  it's 
you." 

"But  why  should  you  like  it  to  be  me?"  asked  In- 
gram, to  whom  flattery,  used  as  he  was  to  it,  was  very 
pleasant,  and  feeling  the  comfort  of  the  cat  who  is  being 
gently  tickled  behind  the  ear. 

''Because,"  said  Ingeborg  earnestly,  "you're  some- 
body wonderful." 

"Oh,  but  you'll  make  me  purr,"  he  said. 

"And  I  see  your  name  in  the  papers  at  least  once  a 
week,"  she  said. 

"Oh,  the  glory!" 

"And  Berlin's  got  two  of  your  pictures.  Bought 
for  the  nation." 

'Yes,  it  has.  And  haggled  till  it  got  them  a  dead 
bargain." 

"And  you've  painted  my  sister." 

'What?"  he  said  quickly,  staring  at  her  again. 
"Why,  of  course.  That's  it.  'Unit's  who  you  remind 
me  of.     The  amazing  Judith." 

"Are  you  such  friends?"  she  asked,  surprised. 


334  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"Oh,  well,  then,  the  wife  of  the  Master  of  Ananias. 
Let  us  give  her  her  honours.  She's  the  most  entirely 
beautiful  woman  I've  seen.     But " 

"But  what?" 

"Oh,  well.  I  did  a  very  good  portrait  of  her.  The 
old  boy  didn't  like  it." 

"What  old  boy?" 

"The  Master.  He  tried  to  stop  my  showing  it.  And 
so  did  the  other  old  boy." 

"What  other  old  boy?" 

"The  Bishop." 

"But  if  it  was  so  good?" 

"  It  was.  It  was  exact.  It  was  the  living  woman.  It 
was  a  portrait  of  sheer,  exquisite  flesh." 

"Well,  then,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"Oh,  but  you  know  bishops "     He  shrugged  his 

shoulders.  "Italy's  got  it  now.  It's  at  Venice.  The 
State  bought  it.  You  must  go  and  see  it  next  time 
you're  there." 

"I  will,"  she  laughed,  "the  very  next  time."  And 
her  laugh  was  the  laugh  of  joyful  amusement  itself. 

Ingram  was  now  forty  three  or  four,  and  leaner  than 
ever.  His  high  shoulders  were  narrow,  his  thin  neck 
came  a  long  way  out  of  his  collar  at  the  back  and  was 
partly  hidden  in  front  by  his  short  red  beard.  His  hair, 
darker  than  his  beard,  was  plastered  down  neatly.  He 
had  very  light,  piercing  eyes,  and  a  nose  that  Ingeborg 
liked.  She  liked  everything.  She  liked  his  tweed 
clothes,  and  his  big  thin  hands — the  wonderful  hands 
that  did  the  wonderful  pictures — and  his  long  thin 
nimble  legs.  She  liked  the  way  he  fidgeted,  and  the 
quickness  of  his  movements.  And  she  glowed  with 
pride  to  think  she  was  sitting  with  a  man  who  was  men- 
tioned in  the  papers  at  least  once  a  week  and  whose 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  335 

pictures  were  bought  by  States,  and  she  glowed  with 
happiness  because  he  did  not  this  time  seem  anxious  to 
go  back  to  the  Glambecks'  at  once;  but  most  of  all  she 
glowed  with  the  heavenliness,  the  absolute  heavenliness 
of  being  talked  to. 

"And  you're  her  sister,"  he  said,  staring  at  her. 
"Now  that  really  is  astonishing." 

"But  everybody  can't  be  beautiful." 

"A  sister  of  hers  here,  tucked  away  in  this  desert. 
It  is  a  desert,  you  know.  I've  come  to  it  because  I 
wanted  a  desert — one  does  sometimes  after  too  much  of 
the  opposite.  But  I  go  away  again,  and  you  live  in  it. 
What  have  you  been  doing  all  these  years,  since  I  was 
here  last?" 

"Oh,  I've— been  busy." 

"But  not  here?     Not  all  the  time  here? " 

"Yes,  all  of  it." 

"What,  not  away  at  all?" 

"  I  went  to  Zoppot  once." 

"Zoppot?  Where's  Zoppot?  I  never  heard  of  Zop- 
pot. I  don't  believe  Zoppot's  any  good.  Do  you  mean 
to  say  you've  not  been  to  a  town,  to  a  place  where  peo- 
ple say  things  and  hear  things  and  rub  themselves  alive 
against  each  other,  since  last  I  was  here?" 

"Well,  but  pastors'  wives  don't  rub." 

"But  it's  incredible!  It's  like  death.  Why  didn't 
you? 

"Because  I  couldn't." 

"As  though  it  weren't  possible  to  tear  oneself  free  at 
least  every  now  and  then." 

"You  wait  till  you're  a  pastor's  wife." 

"But  how  do  you  manage  to  be  so  alive?  For  you 
shine,  you  know.  When  I  think  of  all  the  things 
I've  done  since  I  was  here  last—  He  broke  off, 


336  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

and  looked  away  from  her  across  the  lake.  "Oh, 
well.  Sickening  things,  really,  most  of  them,"  he 
finished. 

"Wonderful  pictures,"  said  Ingeborg,  leaning  forward 
and  flushing  with  her  enthusiasm.  "  That's  what  you've 
done." 

"Yes.  One  paints  and  paints.  But  in  between — 
it's  those  in  between  the  work-fits  that  hash  one  up. 
What  do  you  do  in  between?" 

"In  between  what?" 

"Whatever  it  is  you  do  in  the  morning  and  whatever 
it  is  you  do  in  the  evening." 

"I  enjoy  myself." 

"Yes.     Yes.     That's  what  I'd  like  to  do." 

"But  don't  you?" 

"I  can't." 

"What — you  can't?"  she  said.  "But  you  live  in 
beauty.    You  make  it.    You  pour  it  over  the  world " 

She  stopped  abruptly,  hit  by  a  sudden  thought.  "I 
beg  your  pardon,"  she  said.  "I  don't  know  anything 
really.     Perhaps — you're  in  mourning?  " 

He  looked  at  her.  "No,"  he  said,  "I'm  not  in 
mourning." 

"Or  perhaps — no,  you're  not  ill.  And  you  can't 
be  poor.  Well,  then,  why  in  the  world  don't  you  enjoy 
yourself?" 

"Aren't  you  ever  bored?  "  he  answered. 

"The  days  aren't  long  enough." 

He  looked  round  at  the  empty  landscape  and  shud- 
dered. 

"Here.  In  Kokensee,"  he  said.  "It's  spring  now. 
But  what  about  the  wet  days,  the  howling  days?  What 
about  unmanageable  months  like  February?  Why" — 
he  turned  to  her — "you  must  be  a  perfect  little  seething 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  337 

vessel  of  independent  happiness,  bubbling  over  with 
just  your  own  contentments." 

'I  never  was  called  a  seething  vessel  before,"  said 
Ingeborg,  hugging  her  knees,  her  eyes  dancing.  "  What 
an  impression  for  a  respectable  woman  to  produce!" 

'What  a  gift  to  possess,  you  mean.  The  greatest 
of  all.     To  carry  one's  happiness  about  with  one." 

"But  that's  exactly  what  you  do.  Aren't  you  spilling 
joy  at  every  step?  Splashing  it  into  all  the  galleries  of 
the  world  ?  Leaving  beauty  behind  you  wherever  you've 
been?" 

He  twisted  himself  round  to  lie  at  full  length  and 
look  up  at  her.  'What  delightful  things  you  say!"  he 
said.      'I  wish  I  could  think  you  mean  them." 

"Mean  them?"  she  exclaimed,  flushing  again.  "Do 
you  suppose  I'd  waste  the  precious  minutes  saying 
things  I  don't  mean?  I  haven't  talked  to  any  one  really 
for  years — not  to  any  one  who  answered  back.  And 
now  it's  you!  Why,  it's  too  wonderful!  As  though  I'd 
waste  a  second  of  it." 

'You're  the  queerest,  most  surprising  thing  to  find 
here  on  the  edge  of  the  world,"  he  said,  gazing  up  at 
her.  "And  there's  the  sun  just  got  at  your  hair  through 
the  trees.  Are  you  always  full  of  molten  enthusiasms 
for  people?" 

"Only  for  you." 

"But  what  am  I  to  say  to  these  repeated  pattings?" 
he  cried. 

'You  got  into  my  imagination  that  day  I  met  you 
and  you've  been  in  it  ever  since.  I  was  in  the  stupidest 
state  of  dull  giving  in.     You  pulled  me  out." 

He  stared  at  her,  his  chin  on  his  hand.  "Imagine 
me  pulling  anybody  out  of  anything,*'  he  said.  "Gen- 
erally I  pull  them  in." 


338  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"It's  true  I've  had  relapses,"  she  said.  "Five  re- 
lapses." 

"Five?" 

She  nodded.  "Five  since  then.  But  here  I  am, 
seething  as  you  call  it,  and  it's  you  who  started  me, 
and  I  believe  I  shall  go  on  now  doing  it  uninterruptedly 
for  ever." 

Ingram  put  out  his  hand  with  a  quick  movement, 
as  though  he  were  going  to  touch  the  edge  of  her  dress. 
"Teach  me  how  to  seethe,"  he  said. 

'That's  rather  like  asking  a  worm  to  give  lessons  in 
twinkling  to  a  star." 

Wonderful,"  he  said  softly,  after  a  little  pause, 
to  lie  here  having  sweet  things  said  to  one.  Why 
didn't  I  find  you  before?  I've  been  being  bored  at 
the  Glambecks'  for  a  whole  frightful  week." 

"Oh,  have  you  been  there  a  week  already?"  she 
asked  anxiously.      'Then  you'll  go  away  soon?" 
I  was  going  to-morrow." 

That's  like  last  time.     You  were  just  going  when  I 
met  you." 

"But  now  I'm  going  to  stay.  I'm  going  to  stay  and 
paint  you." 

She  jumped.  "Oh!"  she  exclaimed,  awe-struck. 
"Oh " 

"Paint  you,  and  paint  you,  and  paint  you,"  said 
Ingrain,  "and  see  if  I  can  catch  some  of  your  happiness 
for  myself.  Get  at  your  secret.  Find  out  where  it  all 
comes  from." 

'  But  it  comes  from  vou — at  this  moment  it's  all 
you " 

"It  doesn't.  It's  inside  you.  And  I  want  to  get 
as  much  of  it  as  I  can.  I'm  dusty  and  hot  and 
sick  of  everything.     I'll  come  and  stay  near  you  and 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  339 

paint  you,  and  you  shall  make  me  clean  and  cool 
again." 

"The  stuff  you  talk!"  she  said,  leaning  forward, 
her  face  full  of  laughter.  "As  though  I  could  do  any^ 
thing  for  you  I  You're  really  making  fun  of  me  the 
whole  time.  But  I  don't  care.  I  don't  care  about 
anything  so  long  as  you  won't  go  away." 

"You  needn't  be  afraid  I'm  going  away.  I'm  going 
to  have  a  bath  of  remoteness  and  peace.  I'll  chuck 
the  Glambecks  and  get  a  room  in  your  village.  I'll 
come  every  day  and  paint  you.  You're  like  a  little 
golden  leaf,  a  beech  leaf  in  autumn  blown  suddenly 
from  God  knows  where  across  my  path." 

"Now  it's  you  making  me  purr,"  she  said. 

"You're  like  everything  that's  clear  and  bright  and 
cool  and  fresh." 

"Oh,"  murmured  Ingeborg,  radiant,  "and  I  haven't 
even  got  a  tail  to  wag!" 

"Already,  after  only  ten  minutes  of  you,  I  feel  as  if 
I  were  eating  cold,  fresh,  very  crisp  lettuce." 

"That's  not  nearly  so  nice.  I  don't  think  I  like 
being  lettuce." 

"I  don't  care.  You  are.  And  I'm  going  to  paint 
you.  I'm  going  to  paint  your  soul.  Tell  me  some 
addresses  for  lodgings,"  he  said,  snatching  up  a  sheet 
of  paper  and  a  pencil. 

"There  aren't  any." 

"Then  I  must  stay  at  your  vicarage." 

"You'll  have  to  sleep  with  Robert,  then." 

"What?    Who  is  Robert?" 

"My  husband." 

"Oh,  yes.     But  how  absurd  that  sounds!" 

"What  does?" 

"Your  having  a  husband." 


340  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

'I  don't  see  how  you  can  help  having  a  husband  if 
you're  a  wife." 

"No.  It's  inevitable.  But  it's — quaint.  That  you 
should  be  anybody's  wife,  let  alone  a  pastor's.  Here 
in  Kokensee." 

She  got  up  impulsively.  "Come  and  see  him,"  she 
said.  'You  wouldn't  last  time.  Come  now.  Let  me 
make  tea  for  you.  Let  me  have  the  pride  of  making 
tea  for  you." 

"But  not  this  minute!"  he  begged,  as  she  stood 
over  him  holding  out  her  hand  to  pull  him  up. 

'Yes,  yes.  He's  in  now.  He'll  be  out  in  his  fields 
later.  He'll  be  frightfully  pleased.  We'll  tell  him 
about  the  picture.  Oh,  but  you  did  mean  it,  didn't 
you?"  she  added,  suddenly  anxious. 

He  got  up  reluctantly  and  grumbling:  "I  don't 
want  to  see  Robert.  Why  should  I  see  Robert?  I 
don't  believe  I'm  going  to  like  Robert,"  he  muttered, 
looking  down  at  her  from  what  seemed  an  immense 
height.  "Of  course  I  mean  it  about  the  picture,"  he 
added  in  a  different  voice,  quick  and  interested.  "It'll 
be  a  companion  portrait  to  your  sister's." 

He  laughed.  "That  would  really  be  very  amusing," 
he  said,  stooping  down  and  neatly  putting  his  scat- 
tered things  together. 

Ingeborg   flushed.     "But— that's   rather  cruel  fun, 
isn't  it,  that  you're  making  of  me  now?  "  she  murmured. 
'What?"  he  asked,  straightening  himself  to  look  at 
her. 

The  light  had  gone  out  of  her  face. 

'What?  Why— didn't  I  tell  you  my  picture  of  you 
is  to  be  the  portrait  of  a  spirit?" 

He  pounced  on  his  things  and  gathered  them  up  in 
his  arms. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  341 

"Come  along,"  he  said  impatiently,  "and  be  in- 
telligent. Let  me  beg  you  to  be  intelligent.  Come 
along.  I  suppose  I'm  to  go  in  the  punt.  What's  in 
it?  Books  by  the  dozen.  What's  this?  Eucken? 
Keats?     Pragmatism?     OLord!" 

"Why  O  Lord?"  she  asked,  getting  in  and  pick- 
ing up  the  paddle  while  he  gave  the  punt  a  vigorous 
shove  off  and  jumped  on  to  it  as  it  went.  She  was 
radiant  again.  She  was  tingling  with  pride  and  joy. 
He  really  meant  it  about  the  picture.  He  hadn't  made 
fun  of  her.  On  the  contrary  ....  'Why  O 
Lord?"  she  asked.  "You  said  that,  or  something  like 
it,  last  time  because  I  didn't  read." 

"Well,  now  I  say  it  because  you  do,"  he  said,  crouch- 
ing at  the  opposite  end  watching  her  movements  as 
she  paddled. 

"But  that  doesn't  seem  to  have  much  consistency, 
does  it?"  she  said. 

"Hang  consistency!  I  don't  want  you  addled. 
And  you'll  get  addled  if  you  topple  all  these  different 
stuffs  into  your  little  head  together." 

"But  I'd  rather  be  addled  than  empty." 

"Nonsense!  If  I  could  I'd  stop  your  doing  anything 
that  may  alter  you  a  hairbreadth  from  what  you  are 
at  this  moment." 

To  that  she  remarked,  suspending  her  paddle  in 
mid  air,  her  face  as  sparkling  as  the  shining  drops  that 
flashed  from  it,  that  she  really  was  greatly  enjoying 
herself;  and  they  both  laughed. 

Ingram  waited  in  the  parlour,  where  he  stood  taking 
in  with  attentive  eyes  the  details  of  that  neglected, 
almost  snubbed  little  room,  while  Ingeborg  went  to  the 
laboratory,  so  happy  and  proud  that  she  forgot  she  was 
breaking  rules,  to  fetch,  as  she  said,  Robert. 


342  THE  PASTORS  WIFE 

Robert,  however,  would  not  be  fetched.  He  looked 
up  at  her  with  a  great  reproach  on  her  entrance,  for  as 
invariably  happened  on  the  rare  occasions  when  the 
tremendousness  of  what  she  had  to  say  seemed  to  her 
to  justify  interrupting,  he  thought  he  had  just  arrived 
within  reach,  after  an  infinite  patient  stalking,  of  the 
coy,  illusive  heart  of  the  problem. 

"Mr.  Ingram's  here,"  she  said  breathlessly. 

He  gazed  at  her  over  his  spectacles. 

"In  the  parlour,"  said  Ingeborg.  "He's  come  to 
tea.     Isn't  it  wonderful?     He's  going  to  paint " 

"Who  is  here,  Ingeborg?" 

"Mr.  Ingram.  Edward  Ingram.  Come  and  talk  to 
him  while  I  get  tea." 

She  had  even  forgotten  to  shut  the  door  in  her  ex- 
citement, and  a  puff  of  wind  from  the  open  window 
picked  up  Herr  Dremmel's  papers  and  blew  them  into 
confusion. 

He  endeavoured  to  catch  them,  and  requested  her  in 
a  tone  of  controlled  irritation  to  shut  the  door. 

"Oh,  how  dreadful  of  me!"  she  said,  hastily  doing  it, 
but  with  gaiety. 

"I  do  not  know,"  then  said  Herr  Dremmel,  master- 
ing his  annoyance,  "Mr.  Ingram." 

" But,  Robert,  it's  the  Mr.  Ingrain.  Edward  Ingram. 
The  greatest  artist  there  is  now.  The  great  portrait 
painter.     Berlin  has " 

"Is  he  a  connection  of  your  family's,  Ingeborg?" 

"No,  but  he  painted  Ju " 

"Then  it  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  interrupt  my 
afternoon  on  his  behalf." 

And  Herr  Dremmel  bent  his  head  over  his  papers 
again. 

"But,  Robert,  he's  great — he's  very  great " 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  343 

Herr  Dremmel,  with  a  wetted  thumb,  diligently  re- 
arranged his  pages. 

"But — why,  I  told  him  you'd  love  to  see  him. 
What  am  I  to  say  to  him  if  you  don't  come?  " 

Herr  Dremmel,  his  eye  caught  by  a  sentence  he  had 
written,  was  reading  with  a  deep  enormous  appetite. 

'Tea,"   said   Ingeborg   desperately.       'There's   tea. 
You  always  do  come  to  tea.    It'll  be  ready  in  a  minute. " 

He  looked  up  at  her,  gathering  her  into  his  con- 
sciousness again.     "Tea?"  he  said. 

But  even  as  he  said  it  his  thoughts  fell  off  to  his 
problem,  and  without  removing  his  eyes  from  hers  he 
began  carefully  to  consider  a  new  aspect  of  it  that  in 
that  instant  had  occurred  to  him. 

There  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  go  away.  So  she 
went. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

INGRAM'S  visit  to  the  Glambecks,  had  in  any  case 
been  coming  to  an  end  the  next  day,  when  he  was 
to  have  gone  to  Konigsberg  on  his  way  to  the  Cau- 
casus, a  place  he  hoped  might  trick  him  by  its  novelty 
for  at  least  a  time  out  of  boredom,  and  the  Baron  and 
Baroness  were  greatly  surprised  when  he  told  them  he 
was  not  going  to  the  Caucasus  but  to  Kokensee  instead. 
With  one  voice  they  exclaimed,  "Kokensee?" 
"To  paint  the  pastor's  wife's  hair,"  said  Ingram. 
The  Baron  and  Baroness   were  silent.     The  expla- 
nation seemed  to  them  beyond  comment.     Its  disrep- 
utableness    robbed    them    of    speech.     Herr    Ingram, 
of  course,  an  artist  of  renown- — if  he  had  not  been  of 
very  great  renown  they  could  not  have  seen  their  way 
to  admitting  him  on  terms  of  equality  into  their  circle 
— might   paint   whoever's    hair   he   pleased;    but   was 
there  not  some  ecclesiastical  law  forbidding  that  the 
hair  of  one's  pastor's  wife  should  be  painted?     To  have 
one's  hair  painted  when  one  was  a  pastor's  wife  was 
hardly  more  respectable  than  having  it  dyed.     People 
of  family  were  painted  in  order  to  hand  down  their 
portrait  to  succeeding  generations,  but  you  had  to  have 
generations,  you  had  to  have  scions,  you  had  to  have 
a  noble  stock  for  the  scions  to  spring  from,  and  the 
painting  was  entered  into  soberly,  discreetly,  advisedly, 
in  the  fear  of  God,  for  the  delectation  of  children,  not 
lightly  or  wantonly,  not  for  effect,  not,  as  Herr  Ingram 

3U 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  345 

had  added  of  Frau  Pastor's  hair,  because  any  portion  of 
one's  person  was  strangely  beautiful.  Strangely  beauti- 
ful? They  looked  at  each  other;  and  the  Baroness 
raised  her  large  and  undulating  white  hands  from 
her  black  lap  for  a  moment  and  let  them  drop  on  to 
it  again,  and  the  Baron  slowly  nodded  his  entire  agree- 
ment. 

Ingram  had  found  a  room  in  the  village  inn  at 
Kbkensee,  a  place  so  sordid,  so  entirely  impossible  as 
the  next  habitation  after  theirs  for  one  who  had  been 
their  guest,  that  the  Baron  and  Baroness  were  con- 
cerned for  what  their  servants  must  think  when  they 
heard  him  direct  their  coachman  in  the  presence  of 
their  butler  and  footman,  as  he  clambered  nimbly  into 
the  dogcart,  to  take  him  to  it.  And  the  Baroness 
went  in  and  wrote  at  once  to  her  son  Hildebrand  in 
Berlin,  who  had  introduced  Ingram  to  Glambeck,  and 
told  him  she  did  not  intend  permitting  Herr  Ingram 
to  visit  her  again.  "To  please  you,''''  she  wrote,  "I 
did  it.  But  how  true  it  is  that  these  artists  can  never 
rise  beyond  being  artists!  I  have  finished  with  outsiders, 
however  clever.     Give  me  gentlemen." 

She  did  not  mention,  she  found  she  could  not  men- 
tion, the  hair;  and  to  the  Baron  that  evening  she 
expressed  the  hope  that  at  least  the  picture  would  only 
be  in  watercolour.  Watercolour,  she  felt,  seemed  some- 
how nearer  the  Commandments  than  oils. 

It  was  impossible  to  paint  a  serious  picture  of  Inge- 
borg  in  the  dark  little  parlour  al  the  parsonage,  and 
as  there  was  no  other  room  at  all  that  they  could 
use  Ingram  began  a  series  of  sketches  of  her  out  of 
doors,  in  the  garden,  in  the  punt,  anywhere  and  every- 
where. 

"I  must  get  some  idea  of  you,"  he  said,  perceiving 


346  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

that  a  reason  for  his  coming  every  day  had  to  be 
provided.  "Later  on  I'll  do  the  real  picture.  In  a 
proper  studio." 

"I  wonder  how  I'll  get  to  a  proper  studio?"  smiled 
Ingeborg. 

"I've  got  a  very  good  one  in  Venice.  You  must  sit 
to  me  there." 

"As  though  it  were  round  the  corner!  But  these  are 
very  wonderful,"  she  said,  taking  up  the  sketches.  "I 
wish  I  were  really  like  that." 

"It's  exactly  you  as  you  were  at  the  moment." 

"Nonsense,"  she  said;  but  she  glowed. 

She  knew  it  was  not  true,  but  she  loved  to  believe 
he  somehow,  by  some  miracle,  saw  her  so.  The  sketches 
were  exquisite;  little  impressions  of  happy  moments 
caught  into  immortality  by  a  master.  Hardly  ever  did 
he  do  more  than  her  head  and  throat,  and  sometimes 
the  delicate  descent  to  her  shoulder.  The  day  she  saw 
his  idea  of  the  back  of  her  neck  she  flushed  with  pleas- 
ure, it  was  such  a  beautiful  thing. 

"That's  not  me,"  she  murmured. 

"Isn't  it?  I  don't  believe  anybody  has  ever  ex- 
plained to  you  what  you're  like." 

"There  wasn't  any  need  to.      I  can  see  for  myself." 

"Apparently  that's  just  what  you  can't  do.  It  was 
high  time  I  came." 

"Oh,  but  wasn't  it,"  she  agreed  earnestly. 

He  thought  her  frankness,  her  unadorned  way  of 
saying  what  she  felt,  as  refreshing  and  as  surprising  as 
being  splashed  with  clear  cold  shining  mountain  water. 
He  had  never  met  anything  feminine  that  was  quite  so 
near  absolute  simplicity.  He  might  call  her  the  most 
extravagantly  flattering  things,  and  she  appreciated 
them  and  savoured  them  with  a  kind  of  objective  delight 


to 


to 

to 


s 


C      5 


«    *» 


S     to 


=    ^ 


to    " 
>^ 
C 
to 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  347 

that  interested  him  at  first  extraordinarily.  Then  it 
began  to  annoy  him. 

"You're  as  unself conscious,"  he  told  her  one  after- 
noon a  little  crossly,  when  he  had  been  ransacking 
heaven  and  earth  and  most  of  the  poets  for  images  to 
compare  her  with,  and  she  had  sat  immensely  pleased 
and  interested  and  urging  him  at  intervals  to  go  on, 
"as  a  choir-boy." 

"But  what  a  nice,  clean,  soaped  sort  of  thing  to  be 
like!"  she  said.  "And  so  much  more  alive  than  let- 
tuces." 

"I  wonder  if  you  are  alive?"  he  said,  staring  at  her; 
and  she  looked  at  him  with  her  head  on  one  side  and 
told  him  that  if  she  were  not  a  bishop's  daughter  and  a 
pastor's  wife  and  a  child  of  many  prayers  and  trained 
from  infancy  to  keep  carefully  within  the  limits  of  the 
allowable  in  female  speech  she  would  reply  to  that, 
"You  bet." 

"But  that's  only  if  I  were  vulgar  that  I'd  say  that," 
she  explained.  "Gentility  is  the  sole  barrier,  I  expect 
really,  between  me  and  excess." 

"You  and  excess!  You  little  funny,  cold-watery, 
early-morningy  thing.  One  would  as  soon  connect  the 
dawn  and  the  fields  before  sunrise  and  small  birds  and 
the  greenest  of  green  young  leaves  with  excess." 

He  was  more  near  being  quite  happy  during  this 
first  week  than  he  could  remember  to  have  been  since 
that  period  of  pinafore  in  which  the  world  is  all  mother 
and  daisies.  He  was  enjoying  the  interest  of  complete 
contrast,  the  freshness  that  lies  about  beginnings.  From 
this  remoteness,  this  queer  intimate  German  setting, 
he  looked  at  his  usual  life  as  at  something  entirely 
foolish,  hurried,  noisy,  and  tiresome.  All  those  women 
—good  heavens,  all  those  women— who  collected  and 


348  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

coagulated  about  his  path,  what  terrible  things  they 
seemed  from  here!  Women  he  had  painted,  who  rose 
up  and  reproached  him  because  his  idea  of  them  and 
their  idea  were  different;  women  he  had  fallen  in  love 
with,  or  tried  to  persuade  himself  he  had  fallen  in  love 
with,  or  tried  to  hope  he  would  presently  be  able  to 
persuade  himself  he  had  fallen  in  love  with;  women 
who  had  fallen  in  love  with  him,  and  fluffed  and  flapped 
about  him,  monsters  of  soft  enveloping  suffocation; 
women  he  had  wronged — absurd  word !  women  who  had 
claims  on  him — claims  on  him!  on  him  who  belonged 
only  to  art  and  the  universe.  And  there  was  his  wife — 
good  heavens,  yes,  his  wife.     .     .     . 

From  these  distresses  and  irksomenesses,  from  a 
shouting  world,  from  the  crowds  and  popularity  that 
pushed  between  him  and  the  one  thing  that  mattered, 
his  work,  from  the  horrors  of  home  life,  the  horrors 
of  society  and  vain  repetitions  of  genialities,  from  all 
the  people  who  talked  about  Thought,  and  Art,  and 
the  Mind  of  the  World,  from  jealousies,  affections, 
praises,  passions,  excitement,  boredom,  he  felt  very  safe 
at  Kokensee.  To  be  over  there  in  the  middle  of  the 
distracting  emptiness  of  London  was  like  having  the  sour 
dust  of  a  neglected  market-place  blown  into  one's  face. 
To  be  over  here  in  Kokensee  was  to  feel  like  a  single 
goldfish  in  a  bowl  of  clear  water.  Ingeborg  was  the 
clear  water.  Kokensee  was  the  bowl.  For  a  week  he 
swam  with  delight  in  this  new  element;  for  a  week  he 
felt  so  good  and  innocent,  exercising  himself  in  its  cool 
translucency,  that  almost  did  he  seem  a  goldfish  in.  a 
bib.  Then  Ingeborg  began  to  annoy  him;  and  she 
annoyed  him  for  the  precise  reason  that  had  till  then 
charmed  him,  her  curious  resemblance  to  a  boy. 

This  frank  affection,  this  unconcealed  delight  in  his 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  349 

society,  this  ever-ready  excessive  admiration,  were  ar- 
resting at  first  and  amusing  and  delicious  after  the  sham 
freshness,  the  tricks,  the  sham  daring  things  of  the 
women  he  had  known.  They  were  like  a  bath  at  the 
end  of  a  hot  night;  like  a  country  platform  at  the  end 
of  a  stuffy  railway  journey.  But  you  cannot  sit  in  a 
bath  all  day,  or  stay  permanently  on  a  platform.  You 
do  want  to  go  on.     You  do  want  things  to  develop. 

Ingram  was  nettled  by  Ingeborg's  apparent  in- 
ability to  develop.  It  was  all  very  well,  it  was  charm- 
ing to  be  like  a  boy  for  a  little  while,  but  to  persist  in  it 
was  tiresome.  Nothing  he  could  say,  nothing  he  could 
apply  to  her  in  the  way  of  warm  and  varied  epithet, 
brought  the  faintest  trace  of  selfconsciousness  into  her 
eyes.  What  can  be  done,  he  thought,  with  a  woman 
who  will  not  be  self  conscious?  She  received  his  speeches 
with  enthusiasm,  she  hailed  them  with  delight  and 
laughter,  and,  what  was  particularly  disconcerting,  she- 
answered  back.  Answered  back  with  equal  warmth 
and  with  equal  variety — sometimes,  he  suspected,  an- 
noyed at  being  outdone  in  epithet,  with  even  more. 
To  judge  from  her  talk  she  almost  made  love  to  him. 
He  would  have  supposed  it  was  quite  making  love  if  he 
had  not  known,  if  he  had  not  been  so  acutely  aware 
that  it  was  not.  With  a  face  of  radiance  and  a  voice 
of  joy  she  would  say  suddenly  that  God  had  been  very 
good  to  her;  and  when  he  asked  in  what  way,  would 
answer  earnestly,  "In  sending  you  here."  And  then 
she  would  add  in  that  peculiar  sweet  voice — she  cer- 
tainly had,  thought  Ingram,  a  peculiar  sweet  voice,  a 
little  husky,  again  a  little  like  a  choir-boy's,  but  a  choir- 
boy with  a  slight  sore  throat — "I've  missed  you  dread- 
fully all  these  years.     I've  been  lonely  for  you." 

And  the  honesty  of  her;  the  honest  sincerity  of  her 


350  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

eyes  when  she  said  these  things.  No  choir-boy  older 
than  ten  could  look  at  one  with  quite  such  a  straight 
simplicity. 

Every  day  punctually  at  two  o'clock,  by  which  time 
the  daily  convulsion  of  dinner  and  its  washing  up  was 
over  at  the  parsonage,  he  walked  across  from  his  inn, 
while  Kokensee's  mouths  behind  curtains  and  round 
doors  guttered  with  excited  commentary,  telling  him- 
self as  he  gazed  down  the  peaceful  street  that  this  was 
the  emptiest,  gossip-freest  place  in  the  world,  to  the 
Dremmel  gate;  and  dodging  the  various  rich  puddles  of 
the  yard,  passed  round  the  corner  of  the  house  along 
the  lilac  path  beneath  the  laboratory  windows  to  where, 
at  the  end  of  the  lime-tree  avenue,  Ingeborg  sat  waiting. 
Then  he  would  sketch  her,  or  pretend  to  sketch  her  ac- 
cording as  the  mood  was  on  him,  and  they  would  talk. 

By  the  second  day  he  knew  all  about  her  life  since 
her  marriage,  her  six  children — they  amazed  and  ap- 
palled him — her  pursuit,  started  by  him,  of  culture,  her 
housekeeping,  her  pride  in  Robert's  cleverness,  her  soli- 
tude, her  thirst  for  some  one  to  talk  to.  Persons  like 
Use  and  Rosa,  Frau  Dremmel,  Robertlet  and  Ditti, 
became  extraordinarily  real  to  him.  He  made  little 
drawings  of  them  while  she  talked  up  the  edge  of 
his  paper.  And  he  also  knew,  by  the  second  day,  all 
about  her  life  in  Redchester,  its  filial  ardours,  its  duties, 
its  difficulties  when  it  came  to  disentangling  itself  from 
the  Bishop;  and  his  paper  sprawled  up  its  other  edge 
with  tiny  bishops  and  unattached,  expressive  aprons. 
The  one  thing  she  concealed  from  him  of  the  larger 
happenings  of  her  life  was  Lucerne,  but  even  that  he 
knew  after  a  week. 

"So  you  can  do  things,"  he  said,  looking  at  her  with 
a  new  interest.     "You  can  do  real  live  things." 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  351 

"Oh,  yes.     If  I'm  properly  goaded." 

"I  wonder  what  you  mean  by  properly  goaded?" 
'Well,  I  was  goaded  then.     Goaded  by  being  kept  in 
one  place  uninterruptedly  for  years." 

'That's  what  is  happening  to  you  now." 

"Oh,  but  this  is  different.     And  I've  been  to  Zoppot." 

"Zoppot!" 

"Besides,  you're  here." 

"But  I  won't  be  here  for  ever." 

"Oh,  but  you'll  be  somewhere  in  the  same  world." 

"As  though  that  were  any  good." 

"Of  course  it  is.  I  shall  read  about  you  in  the 
papers." 

"Nonsense,"  he  said  crossly.     " The  papers ! " 

"And  I  shall  curl  up  in  your  memory." 

"  As  if  I  were  dead.  You  sometimes  really  are  beyond 
words  ridiculous." 

'I  expect  it's  because  I've  had  so  little  education," 
she  said  meekly. 

At  tea-time  almost  every  day  Herr  Dremmel  joined 
them  in  the  garden,  and  the  conversation  became  stately. 
The  sketches  were  produced,  and  he  made  polite  com- 
ments. He  discussed  art  with  Ingram,  and  Ingrain 
discussed  fertilizers  with  him,  and  as  neither  knew 
anything  about  the  other's  specialty  they  discussed  by 
force  of  intelligence.  Ingeborg  poured  out  the  tea  and 
listened  full  of  pride  in  them  both.  She  thought  how 
much  they  must  be  liking  and  admiring  each  other. 
Robert's  sound  sense,  his  quaint  and  often  majestic 
English,  his  obviously  notable  scientific  attainments 
must,  she  felt  sure,  deeply  impress  Ingram.  And  of 
course  to  see  and  speak  to  the  great  Ingram  every  day 
could  not  but  give  immense  gratification  to  Robert, 
now  that  he  had  become  aware  of  who  he  was.     She  sat 


352  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

between  the  two  men  in  her  old-fashioned  voluminous 
white  frock,  looking  from  one  to  the  other  with  eager 
pride  while  they  talked.  She  did  not  say  anything  her- 
self out  of  respect  for  such  a  combination  of  brains,  but 
she  was  all  ears.  She  drank  the  words  in.  It  was  more 
mind-widening  she  felt  even  than  the  Clarion. 

Ingram  hated  tea-time  at  the  parsonage.  Every 
day  it  was  more  of  an  effort  to  meet  Herr  Dremmel's 
ceremoniousness  appropriately,  and  his  scientific  thirst 
for  facts  about  art  bored  Ingram  intolerably.  He  de- 
tested the  large  soft  creases  of  his  clothes  and  the  way 
they  buttoned  and  bulged  between  the  buttonings.  He 
disliked  him  for  having  sleeves  and  trousers  that  were 
too  long.  He  shuddered  at  the  thought  of  the  six 
children.  He  did  not  want  to  hear  about  superphos- 
phates, and  resented  having  regularly  every  afternoon 
to  pretend  he  did;  and  he  did  want,  and  this  became  a 
growing  wish  and  a  growing  awkwardness,  to  make 
love  to  Herr  Dremmel's  wife. 

Herr  Dremmel's  large  unconsciousness  of  such  a 
possibility  annoyed  him,  particularly  his  obliviousness 
to  the  attractiveness  of  Ingeborg.  He  would  certainly 
deserve,  thought  Ingram,  anything  he  got.  It  was 
scandalous  not  to  take  more  care  of  a  little  thing  like 
that.  Every  day  at  tea-time  he  was  enraged  by  this 
want  of  care  in  Herr  Dremmel,  and  every  day  before 
and  after  tea  he  was  engrossed,  if  abortive  efforts  to 
philander  can  be  called  so,  in  not  taking  care  of  her 
himself. 

"You  see,"  said  Ingeborg  when  he  commented  on 
the  immense  personal  absences  and  withdrawals  of  Herr 
Dremmel,  "Robert  is  very  great.  He's  wonderful! 
The  things  he  does  with  just  grains!  And  of  course 
if  one  is  going  to  achieve  anything  one  has  to  give  up 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  353 

every  minute  to  it.  Why,  even  when  he  loved  me  he 
usedn't  to " 

"Even  when  he  loved  you?"  interrupted  Ingram. 
"What,  doesn't  he  now?" 

"Oh,  yes,  yes,"  she  said  quickly,  flushing.  "I  meant 
— of  course  he  does.  And  besides,  one  always  loves 
one's  wife." 

"No,  one  doesn't." 

"Yes,  one  does." 

They  left  it  at  that. 

At  the  end  of  his  second  week  in  Kokensee  Ingram 
found  himself  increasing  the  number  of  his  adjectives 
and  images  and  comparisons,  growing  almost  eagerly 
poetical,  for  the  force  of  proximity  and  want  of  any  one 
else  to  talk  to  or  to  think  about  was  beginning  to  work, 
and  it  was  becoming  the  one  thing  that  seemed  to  him 
to  matter  to  get  selfconsciousness  into  her  frank  eyes, 
something  besides  or  instead  of  that  glow  of  admiring 
friendliness.  He  was  now  very  much  attracted,  and 
almost  equally  exasperated.  She  was,  after  all,  a 
woman;  and  it  was  absurd,  it  was  incredible,  that  he, 
Ingram,  with  all  these  opportunities  should  not  be  able 
to  shake  her  out  of  her  first  position  of  just  wonder  at 
him  as  an  artist  and  a  celebrity. 

She  was  so  warm  and  friendly  and  close  in  one 
sense,  and  so  nowhere  at  all  in  another;  so  responsive, 
so  quick,  so  ready  to  pile  the  sweetest  honey  of  flattery 
and  admiration  on  him,  and  so  blank  to  the  fact  that 
— well,  that  there  they  were,  he  and  she.  And  then 
she  had  a  sense  of  fun  that  interrupted,  a  sense  most 
admirable  in  a  woman  at  any  other  time,  but  not  when 
she  is  being  made  love  to.  Also  she  was  very  irrelevant; 
he  could  not  fix  her;  she  tumbled  about  mentally,  and 
that  hindered  progress,  too.     Not  that  he  cared  a  straw 


354  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

for  her  mentality  except  in  so  far  as  its  quality  was  a 
hindrance;  it  was  that  other  part  of  her,  her  queer 
little  soul  that  interested  him,  her  happiness  and  zest 
of  life,  and,  of  course,  the  graces  and  harmonies  of  her 
lines  and  colouring. 

"You  know,  I  suppose,"  he  said  to  her  one  evening 
as  they  walked  slowly  back  along  the  path  through 
the  rye-field,  and  the  cool  scents  of  the  ended  summer's 
day  rose  in  their  faces  as  they  walked,  "that  I'd  give 
a  hundred  days  of  life  in  London  or  Paris  for  an  hour  of 
this  atmosphere,  this  cleanness  that  there  is  about  you." 

"I  don't  think  a  hundred's  much.  I'd  give  them 
all  to  be  with  you.  Here.  Now.  In  the  rye-field. 
Isn't  it  wonderful  this  evening — isn't  it  beautiful? 
Did  you  smell  that?"  She  stopped  and  raised  her  nose 
selectingly.     "Just  that  instant?     That's  convolvulus." 

'You  have  such  faith  in  my  gods,"  he  went  on, 
when  he  could  get  her  away  from  the  convolvulus,  "such 
a  bravery  of  belief,  such  a  dear  bravery  of  belief." 

'Well,  but  of  course,"  she  said,  turning  shining  eyes 
on  to  him.  'Who  wouldn't  believe  in  your  gods? 
Art,  love  of  beauty " 

"But  it  isn't  only  art.  My  gods  are  all  sweet  things 
and  all  fine  things,"  said  Ingram,  convinced  at  the 
moment  that  he  had  never  done  anything  but  worship 
gods  of  that  particular  flavour,  so  thoroughly  was  he 
being  purged  by  the  hyssop  of  life  in  Kbkensee. 

"Oh,"  said  Ingeborg  with  an  awed  enthusiasm, 
"how  wonderful  it  is  that  you  should  be  exactly  what 
you  are!  But  it's  clever  of  you,"  she  added  with  a 
little  movement  of  her  hands,  smiling  up  at  him,  "to 
be  so  exactly  what  you  are." 

"And  do  you  know  what  exactly  you  are?  You're 
the  open  window  in  the  prison-house  of  my  life." 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  355 

She  held  her  breath  a  moment.  "How  very  beau- 
tiful!" she  then  said.  "How  very  beautiful!  And 
how  kind  you  are  to  think  of  me  like  that!  But  why 
is  it  a  prison-house?     You  of  all  people " 

"It  isn't  living,  you  see.  It's  existence  in  caricature 
over  there.  It's  like  dining  perpetually  with  Madame 
Tussaud's  waxworks,  or  anything  else  totally  unreal  and 
incredible." 

;'But  I  don't  understand  how  a  great  artist " 

"And  you're  like  an  open  window,  like  the  sky,  like 
sweet  air,  like  freedom,  like  secret  light " 

"Oh,"  she  murmured,  deprecating  but  enchanted. 

'When  I'm  with  you  I  feel  an  intolerable  disgust 
for  all  the  chatter  and  flatulence  of  that  other  life." 

"And  when  I'm  with  you,"  she  said,  "I  feel  as  if  I 
were  stuffed  with — oh,  with  stars." 

He  was  silent  a  moment.  Then,  determined  not  to 
be  outdone,  he  said: 

'When  I'm  with  you  I  begin  to  feel  like  a  star  my- 
self." 

"As  though  you  weren't  always  one." 

"No.  It's  only  you.  Till  I  found  you  I  was  just  an 
angry  ball  of  mud." 

"But " 

"A  thirsty  man  in  a  stuffy  room." 

"But " 

"An  emptiness,  a  wailing  blank,  an  eviscerated 
thing." 

"A  what?"  asked  Ingeborg,  who  had  not  heard 
that  word  before. 

"And  you,"  he  went  on,  "are  the  cool  water  that 
quenches  me,  the  scent  of  roses  come  into  the  room, 
liquid  light  to  my  clay." 

She  drew  a  deep  breath.      "It's  wonderful,  wonder- 


356  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

ful,"  she  said.  "And  it  sounds  so  real  somehow — 
really  almost  as  though  you  meant  it.  Oh,  I  don't 
mind  you  making  fun  of  me  a  bit  if  only  you'll  go  on 
saying  lovely  things  like  that." 

"Fun  of  you?  Have  you  no  idea,  then,  positively 
no  idea,  how  sweet  you  are?" 

He  bent  down  and  looked  into  her  face.  "With 
little  kisses  in  each  of  your  eyes,"  he  said,  scrutinizing 
them. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

IN  REDCHESTER  nobody  talked  of  kisses.  They 
were  things  not  mentioned.  They  were  things  al- 
lowable only  under  strictly  defined  conditions — if 
you  did  not  want  to  kiss,  for  instance,  and  the  other 
person  did  not  like  it — and  confined  in  their  application 
to  the  related.  Like  pews  in  a  parish  church,  they  were 
reserved  for  families.  Aunts  might  kiss:  freely.  Es- 
pecially if  they  were  bearded — Ingeborg  had  an  aunt 
with  a  beard.  Mothers  might  kiss;  she  had  seen  her 
calm  mother  kiss  a  new-born  baby  with  a  sort  of  devour- 
ing, a  cannibalism.  Bishops  might  kiss,  within  a  certain 
restricted  area.  As  for  husbands,  they  did  kiss,  and 
nothing  stopped  them  till  the  day  when  they  sud- 
denly didn't.  But  no  one,  aunts,  mothers,  bishops,  or 
husbands,  regarded  the  practice  as  a  suitable  basis  for 
conversation. 

How  refreshing,  therefore,  and  how  altogether  de- 
lightful it  was  that  Ingram  should  be  so  natural,  and 
how  she  loved  to  know  that,  though  of  course  he  was 
pretending  about  the  little  kisses  in  her  eyes,  he  thought 
it  worth  while  to  pretend!  With  glee  and  pride  and 
amusement  she  wondered  what  Redchester  would 
say  if  it  could  hear  the  great  man  it,  too,  honoured 
being  so  simple  and  at  the  same  time  so  very  kind. 
For  the  first  time  she  did  not  answer  back;  she  was 
silent,  thinking  amused  and  pleasant  thoughts.  And 
Ingram  walking  beside  her  with  his  hands  in  his  pock- 

337 


358  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

ets  and  a  gayness  about  his  heels  felt  triumphant, 
for  he  had,  he  thought,  got  through  to  her  self  con- 
sciousness, he  had  got  her  quiet  at  last. 

Not  that  he  did  not  enjoy  the  incense  she  burned 
before  him,  the  unabashed  expression  of  her  admiration, 
but  a  man  wants  room  for  his  lovemaking,  and  once  he 
is  embarked  on  that  pleasant  exercise  he  does  not  want 
the  words  taken  out  of  his  mouth.  Ingeborg  was 
always  taking  the  words  out  of  his  mouth  and  then 
flinging  them  back  at  him  again  with,  as  it  were,  a 
flower  stuck  behind  their  ear.  He  had  known  that  if 
once  he  could  pierce  through  to  her  selfconsciousness 
she  would  leave  off  doing  this,  she  would  become  aware 
that  he  was  a  man  and  she  was  a  woman.  She  would 
become  passive.  She  would  let  go  of  persisting  that  he 
was  a  demi-god  and  she  a  sort  of  humble  pew-opener 
or  its  equivalent  in  his  temple.  Now  apparently  he  had 
pierced  through,  and  her  silence  as  she  walked  beside 
him  with  her  eyes  on  the  ground  was  more  sweet  to  him 
than  anything  she  had  ever  said. 

Before,  however,  they  had  reached  the  gap  in  the 
lilac  hedge  that  formed  the  simple  entrance  on  that  side 
to  the  Dremmel  garden  there  she  was  beginning  again. 

"In  Redchester "  she  began. 

"Oh,"  he  interrupted,  "are  you  going  to  give  me 
a  description  of  the  town  and  its  environs  so  as  to  keep 
me  from  giving  you  a  description  of  yourself?" 

"No,"  she  laughed.  'You  know  I  could  listen  to 
you  for  ever." 

The  same  frankness;  the  same  shining  look.  Ingram 
wanted  to  kick. 

"I  was  thinking,"  she  went  on,  "how  nobody  in 
Redchester  ever  talked  about  kisses.     Even  little  ones." 

"So  you  are  shocked?" 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  359 


a- 


:No.  What  a  word!  I'm  full  of  wonder  at  the 
miracle  of  you — you — being  so  kind  to  me — me!  Say- 
ing such  beautiful  things,  thinking  such  beautiful 
things." 

This  trick  of  gratitude  was  really  maddening. 
'Tell    me    about    Redchester,"    he    said    shortly. 
"Don't  they  kiss  each  other  there?" 

"Oh,  yes.     But  they  don't  have  them  in  their  eyes." 

He  shuddered. 

"And  people  don't  mention  them,  unless  it's  aunts. 
And  then  not  like  that.  No  aunt  could  ever  possibly 
be  of  the  pregnant  parts  needful  for  the  invention  of  a 
phrase  like  that.  And  if  she  were  I  don't  suppose  I'd 
want  to  listen." 

"You  do  at  least  then  want  to  listen?" 
'Want  to?     Aren't  I  listening  always  to  every  word 
you  say  with  both  my  ears?     What  a  mercy,"  she  added 
with  thankfulness,  "what  a  real  mercy,  what  an  escape, 
that  you're  not  an  aunt!" 

'You  can't  call  it  exactly  a  hairbreadth  escape,"  he 
said  moodily.  "I  don't  feel  even  the  rough  beginnings 
of  an  aunt  anywhere  about  me." 

He  walked  with  her  through  the  darkness  of  the 
lime-tree  avenue,  refusing  to  stay  to  supper.  Why 
could  he  not  then  and  there  in  that  solitary  dark  place 
catch  her  in  his  arms  and  force  her  to  wake  up,  to 
leave  off  being  a  choir-boy,  a  pew-opener?  Or  shake 
her.  One  or  the  other.  At  that  moment  he  did  not 
much  care  which.  But  he  could  not.  He  told  himself 
that  why  he  could  not  was  because  she  would  be  so  limit- 
lessly  surprised,  and  that  for  all  her  surprise  he  would 
be  no  nearer,  not  an  inch  nearer  to  whatever  it  was  in 
her  he  was  now  so  eager  to  reach.  She  might  even 
— indeed  he  felt  certain  she  would— thank   him   pro- 


360  THE  PASTORS  WIFE 

fusely  for  such  a  further  mark  of  esteem,  for  being,  as 
she  would  say,  so  very  kind. 

"Are  you  tired?"  she  asked,  peering  up  at  his  face 
in  the  scented  gloom,  for  it  was  the  time  of  the  flower- 
ing of  the  lime-trees,  on  his  suddenly  stopping  and 
saying  good  night. 

"No." 

"You're  feeling  quite  well?" 

"Perfectly." 

"Then,"  she  said,  "why  go  away?" 

"I'm  in  slack  water.  I  have  no  talk.  I'd  bore  you. 
Good  night." 

The  next  day,  having  found  the  morning  quite  in- 
tolerably long,  he  approached  her  directly  they  were 
alone  on  the  difficult  subject  of  husbands. 

"It's  no  good,  Ingeborg,"  he  said,  "yes,  I'm  going 
to  call  you  Ingeborg — we're  fellow-pilgrims  you  and 
I  along  this  rocky  ridiculousness  called  life,  and  we'll 
soon  be  dead,  and  so,  my  dear,  let  us  be  friends  for 
just  this  little  while " 

"Oh,  but  of  course,  of  course " 


"It's  no  good,  you  know,  barring  certain  very  ob- 
vious subjects  because  of  that  idiotic  prepossession 
one  has  for  what  is  known  as  good  taste.  The  only 
really  living  thing  is  bad  taste.  All  the  preliminaries 
to  real  union,  union  of  any  sort,  mind  or  body,  consist 
in  the  chucking  away  of  reticences  and  cautions  and 
proprieties,  and  each  single  preliminary  is  in  bad  taste. 
If  we're  going  to  be  friends  we'll  have  to  go  in  for  that. 
Bad  taste.     Execrable  taste.     Now " 

He  stopped. 

"Well?" 

She  was  looking  at  him  in  a  kind  of  alarm.  This 
was  the  longest  speech  by  far  he  had  made,  and  she 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  361 

could  not  imagine  what  was  coming  at  the  end.  He 
was  busy  as  usual  flinging  her  on  to  paper — the  number 
of  his  studies  of  her  was  by  this  time  something  mon- 
strous— and  was  glancing  at  her  swiftly  and  profession- 
ally at  every  sentence. 

"About  husbands.  Tell  me  what  you  think  about 
husbands." 

"About  husbands?  But  they're  not  bad  taste,"  she 
said. 

'Tell  me  what  you  think  about  them." 
'Well,  they're  people  one  is  very  fond  of,"  she  said, 
with  her  hands  clasped  round  her  knees. 

"Oh.     You  find  that?" 

"Yes.     Don't  you?" 

"I  never  had  one." 

'  The  advantages  of  being  a  woman !  They're  people 
one  is  fond  of  once  and  for  all.  They  rescue  one  from 
Redchester.  They're  good  and  kind.  They  help  one 
roll  up  great  balls  of  common  memories,  and  all  the 
memories  grow  somehow  into  tender  things  at  last. 
And  they're  patient.  Even  when  they've  found  out 
how  tiresome  one  is  they  still  go  on  being  patient. 
And — one  loves  them." 

"And — they  love  you?  " 

She  flushed.     "Of  course,"  she  said. 

'You're  amusing  with  your  of  courses  and  once  for 
alls.  Really  you  know  there  are  no  such  tilings. 
Nothing  necessarily  follows.  I  mean,  not  when  you  get 
to  human  beings." 

Ingeborg  fidgeted.  Too  well  did  she  know  the  dis- 
honesty of  her  Of  course;  too  well  did  she  remember 
the  sudden  switching  off,  after  Zoppot,  of  Robert's 
love.  But  the  rest  was  strictly  true  anyhow,  she 
thought.     She  did  love  him—dear  Robert.     Thediffer- 


362  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

ence  between  him  and  an  amazing  friend  like  Ingram 
was,  she  explained  to  herself,  that  she  was  interested  in 
Ingram,  profoundly  interested,  and  she  was  not  inter- 
ested in  Robert.  That,  she  supposed,  was  because  she 
loved  Robert.  Perfect  love,  she  said  to  herself,  watch- 
ing with  careful  attention  the  approach  of  a  hairy  and 
rather  awful  caterpillar  across  the  path  towards  her  shoes, 
perfect  love  cast  out  a  lot  of  things  besides  fear.  It 
cast  out,  for  instance,  conversation.  And  interest,  which 
one  couldn't  very  well  have  without  conversation. 
Interest,  of  course,  was  an  altogether  second-rate  feeling 
compared  to  love,  and  because  it  was  second-rate  it  was 
noisier,  expressing  itself  with  a  copiousness  unnecessary 
when  one  got  to  the  higher  stages  of  feeling.  One 
loved  one's  Robert,  and  one  kept  quiet.  Far  the  high- 
est thing  was  to  love;  but — she  drew  her  feet  up  quickly 
under  her — how  very  interesting  it  was  being  interested ! 

"Well?"  he  said,  looking  at  her,  "go  on." 

"Well,  but  I  can't  go  on  because  I've  finished.  There 
isn't  any  more." 

"It's  a  soon  exhausted  subject." 

"That's  because  it's  so  simple  and  so — so  dear. 
You  know  where  you  are  with  husbands." 

"You  mean  you  know  you're  not  anywhere." 

"Oh,"  she  said,  throwing  back  her  head  and  facing 
him  courageously,  "how  you  don't  realise!  And  any- 
how," she  added,  "if  that  were  true  it  would  be  a  very 
placid  and  restful  state  to  be  in." 

"Negation.  Death.  Do  you  find  it  placid  and  rest- 
ful with  me?" 

"No,"  she  said  quickly. 

He  put  down  his  brushes  and  stared  at  her.  "What 
a  mercy!"  he  said.  'What  a  mercy!  I  was  beginning 
to  be  afraid  you  did." 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  363 

By  the  end  of  the  third  week  an  odd  thing  had  hap- 
pened. He  was  no  nearer  piercing  through  her  outer 
husk  to  any  emotions  she  might  possess  than  before, 
but  she,  astonishingly,  had  pierced  through  his. 

The  outer  husk  of  Ingram  at  this  time  and  for  some 
years  previously  was  a  desire  at  all  costs  to  dodge 
boredom,  to  get  tight  hold  of  anything  that  promised 
to  excite  him,  squeeze  it  with  diligence  till  the  last  drop 
of  entertainment  had  been  extracted,  and  then  let  it  go 
again  considerably  crumpled.  It  was  the  kind  of  husk 
that  causes  divergences  of  opinion  with  one's  wife. 
And  behind  it  sat,  wrapped  in  flame,  the  thing  that  was 
with  him  untouchably  first,  his  work.  He  did  not  know 
how  or  why,  but  in  that  third  week  Ingeborg  got  through 
this  husk  and  became  mixed  up  in  a  curious  inextricable 
way  with  the  flaming  holy  thing  inside. 

High  above,  immeasurably  above,  any  interest  he 
had  ever  felt  in  women  was  his  work.  The  divers  love- 
makings  with  which  his  past  bristled  as  an  ancient 
churchyard  bristles  with  battered  tombstones,  had  all 
been  conducted  as  it  were  on  his  doorstep.  He  came 
out  to  the  lady,  the  lady  destined  so  soon  to  be  a  tomb- 
stone, often  with  passion,  sometimes  with  illusions,  and 
always  with  immense  goodwill  to  believe  that  here  was 
the  real  thing  at  last,  but  she  never  came  in.  She 
might  and  did  catch  cold  there  for  anything  he  cared, 
she  should  never  cross  the  threshold  and  start  interfer- 
ing, delaying,  coming  between.  In  the  end  she  got  left 
out  there  alone,  along  with  the  scraper,  feeling  chilly. 

And  here  was  Ingeborg  through  the  door,  and  not 
interfering,  not  delaying,  but  positively  furthering. 

The  increasing  beauty  of  his  studies  of  her  first  made 
him  suspect  it.  Their  beauty  began  to  surprise  him, 
to  take  him  unawares,  as  though  it  were  a  thing  outside 


364  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

and  apart  from  his  own  will.  He  had  found  so  few 
things  in  humanity  that  seemed  beautiful,  and  his  pic- 
tures had  been  pictures  of  resentments — impish  and 
wonderful  exposures  by  a  master  of  the  littleness  at  the 
back  of  brave  shows.  For  a  fortnight  now  he  had 
sketched  and  sketched  and  splashed  about  with  colour 
just  as  an  excuse  for  staying  on,  in  the  desire  to  make 
love  to  Ingeborg,  to  refresh  himself  for  a  space  at  this 
unexpectedly  limpid  little  spring.  He  had  been  at- 
tracted, irritated,  increasingly  attracted,  greatly  ex- 
asperated, greatly  attracted.  He  had  grown  eager, 
determined,  almost  anxious  at  last.  But  these  various 
emotions  had  been  felt  by  him  strictly  on  his  doorstep. 
She  was  merely  a  substitute,  and  at  that  only  a  tempo- 
rary substitute,  for  the  Caucasus. 

Then  in  the  third  week  he  perceived  that  she  had 
left  off  being  that.     She  was  no  longer  just  an  odd 
little  thing,  an  attractive,  delicious  little  thing  to  him, 
of  the  colouring  he  best  loved,  the  fairness,  the  whiteness, 
a  thing  that  offered  up  incense  before  him  with  un- 
flagging zeal,  a  thing  full  of  contentments  and  generous 
ready  friendship;  she  still  was  all  that,  but  she  was 
more.     Like  Adam  when  God  breathed  into  his  nostrils 
the  breath  of  life,  she  had  become  a  living  soul,  and 
that  of  which  she  was  the  living  soul  was  his  work. 
Not  only  her  soul  but  his  had  begun  to  get  into  his 
studies  of  her.     Each  successive  study  unveiled  more  of 
an   inner  beauty.     Each  fixed   into  form   and   colour 
qualities  in  her  and  qualities  in  him  who  apprehended 
them  that  he  had  not  known  were  there.     It  was  as  if 
he  watched,  while  his  hand  was  held  and  guided  sure 
swift  touch  by  sure  swift  touch  by  some  one  else,  some 
one  altogether  greater,  some  splendid  master  from  some 
splendid  other  world,  who  laid  hold  of  him  as  one  lays 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  365 

hold  of  a  learner  and  showed  him  these  things  and  said 
at  each  fresh  stroke,  "Look — this  is  what  she  is  like, 
the  essence  of  her,  the  spirit  .  .  .  and  see,  it  is 
what  you  are  like,  too,  for  you  recognise  it." 

In  that  third  week  late  one  afternoon  they  went  on 
the  lake.  Ingeborg  paddled  slowly  along  the  middle 
of  the  quiet  water  towards  the  sunset,  and  Ingram  sat 
at  the  other  end  with  his  back  to  it  and  watched  her 
becoming  more  and  more  transfigured  as  the  sun  got 
lower. 

Very  early  in  their  acquaintance  he  had  conveyed  to 
her  that  she  ought  always  to  wear  white  and  that  hats 
were  foolish  and  unnecessary;  therefore  she  did  wear 
white,  and  sat  hatless  in  the  punt.  The  light  blinded 
her.  She  could  see  nothing  of  him  but  a  dark  hunch 
against  a  blaze  of  sky.  But  when  she  wanted  to  turn 
the  punt  towards  the  relief  of  the  shadows  along  the 
shore  he  instantly  stopped  her,  and  told  her  to  keep  on 
straight  into  the  eye  of  the  sun. 

"But  I  can't  see,"  she  said. 

"  But  I  can.  It's  for  my  picture.  It's  going  to  be  a 
study  of  light." 

"Shall  you  be  able  to  do  it  from  the  sketches? " 

"No.     From  you." 

'Why,  you  said  you  couldn't  anywhere  here  because 
there  wasn't  a  proper  place." 

"There  isn't.  I'm  going  to  do  it  in  Venice.  In  my 
studio  there." 

"But  can  vou  from  memory?" 

"No.     From  you." 

She  laughed.  'How  I  wish  I  could!"  she  said.  "I 
ache  and  ache  to  see  things,  to  go  to  Italy " 

She  sighed.  The  vision  of  it  was  unendurably  beauti- 
ful. 


366  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

'Well,  you'll  have  to.  Not  only  because  it's  mon- 
strous you  shouldn't,  monstrous  and  shocking  and  un- 
believable that  you  should  be  stuck  in  Kokensee  for 
years  on  end  and  never  see  or  hear  or  know  any  of  the 
big  things  of  life,  but  because  you  can't  spoil  my  great 
picture — -the  greatest  I  shall  ever  have  done." 

"Robert  could  never  leave  his  work." 

"I  don't  want  Robert  to  leave  anything.  It's  you 
I'm  going  to  paint.     And  I  can't  do  without  you." 

"How  very  awkward,"  she  smiled,  "because  Robert 
can't  do  without  me,  either." 

He  plunged  his  arm  into  the  water  with  sudden  ex- 
treme violence,  scooped  a  handful  of  it  high  into  the 
air,  and  dashed  it  back  again. 

It  had  seemed  to  him  obvious  throughout  his  life 
that  when  it  came  to  the  supremest  things  not  only  did 
one  give  up  everything  oneself  for  them  but  other 
people  were  bound  to  give  up  everything,  too.  The 
world  and  the  centuries  were  to  be  enriched — he  had 
a  magnificent  private  faith  in  his  position  as  a  creator 
— and  it  was  the  duty  of  those  persons  who  were  need- 
ful to  the  process  to  deliver  themselves,  their  souls  and 
bodies,  up  to  him  in  what  he  was  convinced  was  an 
entirely  reasonable  sacrifice.  If  any  one  were  neces- 
sary to  his  work,  even  only  indirectly  by  keeping  him 
content  while  he  did  it  so  that  he  could  produce  his  best, 
it  was  that  person's  duty  to  come  to  his  help.  A  para- 
mount duty;  passing  the  love  of  home  or  family.  He 
would  do  as  much,  he  was  convinced,  for  some  one  else 
who  should  instead  of  him  possess  the  gift.  Here  had 
he  been  in  a  state  of  dissatisfaction  and  restlessness  for 
years,  and  his  work,  though  his  reputation  leapt  along, 
was,  he  very  well  knew,  not  what  it  could  have  been. 
Boredom  had  seized  him;  a  great  disgust  of  humanity. 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  367 

There  had  been  harassing  private  complications;  his 
wife  had  turned  tiresome,  refusing  to  understand.  And 
now  he  had  found  this — this  thing,  he  thought,  looking 
at  her  in  the  kind  of  fury  that  seized  him  at  the  merest 
approach  to  any  thwarting  that  touched  his  work,  of 
light  and  fire  and  cleanness,  this  little  hidden  precious 
stone,  hidden  for  him,  waiting  for  him  to  come  and 
make  of  her  a  supreme  work  of  art,  and  she  was  putting 
forward  middle-class  obstacles,  Philistine  difficulties, 
ludicrous  trivialities — Robert,  in  short — to  the  achieve- 
ment of  it. 

"Do  you  realise,"  he  said,  leaning  forward  and  star- 
ing at  her  with  his  strange  pale  eyes,  "what  it  means 
to  be  painted  by  me?  " 

"My  utter  glorification,"  she  answered,  "my  utter 
pride." 

He  waved  his  hand  impatiently.  "It  means,"  he 
said,  "and  in  this  case  it  would  supremely  mean,  an- 
other one  added  to  the  great  possessions  of  the  world." 

"Oh,"  said  Ingeborg;  and  then,  after  a  slight  hold- 
ing of  her  breath,  again  "Oh." 

She  was  awestruck.  His  voice  came  out  of  the 
black  shadow  of  him  at  her  through  clenched  teeth, 
which  gave  it  a  strange  awe-striking  quality.  She  felt, 
with  the  sunset  blinding  her  and  that  black  figure  in 
front  of  her  and  the  intense  clenchedness  of  the  voice 
issuing  from  it,  in  the  presence  of  immensities.  She 
wondered  whether  it  would  have  been  any  worse — in- 
stantly she  corrected  the  word  (it  had  been  the  merest 
slip  of  her  brain)  to  more  glorious — to  be  sitting  in 
a  punt  with,  simultaneously,  Shakespeare,  SophocK  s. 
Homer,  and  the  entire  Renaissance.  Weak  a  thing 
though  her  paddle  was  she  pressed  it  tightly  in  her 
arms. 


368  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"It's — a  great  responsibility,"  she  said  lamely. 

"Of  course  it  is,"  he  said,  still  in  that  clenched  voice. 
"And  it  has  to  be  met  greatly." 

"But  what  have  / " 

"Here's  this  picture — I  feel  it  in  me,  I  tell  you  I  feel  it 
and  know  it — going  to  be  the  crowning  work  of  my  life, 
going  to  be  a  thing  of  living  beauty  throughout  the 
generations,  going  to  be  the  Portrait  of  a  Lady  that 
draws  the  world  to  look  at  it  during  all  the  ages  after 
we  are  dead " 

He  broke  off.  He  left  off  hurling  the  sentences  at 
her.     He  began  to  beg. 

"Ingeborg,"  he  said,  "you've  cleaned  me  up  and 
glorified  me  like  the  sunshine  during  this  stay  here, 
without  meaning  to  clean  or  bothering  to  clean  a  bit. 
You've  become  the  eyes  of  the  universe  to  me,  and  if  it 
weren't  for  you  now  the  whole  thing  would  be  an  eyeless 
monster  and  a  mask  and  a  horror.  Without  you — why, 
even  during  the  mornings  here  when  I  mayn't  come  to 
you  I'm  like  a  ship  laid  up  in  an  out-of-the-way  port, 
an  aeroplane  without  an  engine,  a  book  with  the  first 
and  last  pages  lost.  The  mornings  are  like  a  realistic 
novel  of  Gissing's  after  a  fairy  tale.  The  afternoons 
are  like  a  bright  vision  in  a  crystal,  like  a  dream,  like 
one  of  the  drops  into  fairyland  quite  common  people 
sometimes  take.  You're  the  littlest  thing,  and  you 
leave  the  most  enormous  blank.  It's  extraordinary  the 
goneness  of  things  directly  I'm  away  from  you.  I  did 
poor  work  before  I  found  you,  poor  I  mean  compared  to 
what  I  know  it  might  be,  and  I'll  do  none  at  all  or  mere 
ruins  if  I  have  to  work  without  you  now.  Work  is 
everything  to  me,  and  I'm  not  going  to  be  able  to  do 
it  if  you're  not  there.  Jeer  at  me  if  you  like.  Jeer  at 
me  for  a  parasite.     I've  been  an  empty  thing  without 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  369 

you  all  these  years.  You  can't  let  me  go  again.  You 
can't  let  me  drop  back  into  the  old  angers,  into  the  old 
falling  short  of  the  highest.  You're  the  spirit  of  my 
inmost.  You're  my  response,  my  reality,  my  glorifica- 
tion, my  transmuter  into  a  god.  And  the  picture  I'm 
going  to  do  of  you  will  be  the  Portrait  of  a  Lady  who 
gave  him  back  his  Soul." 


CHAPTER  XXX 

SHE  stared  at  his  black  outline  helplessly.  She 
was  overwhelmed.  What  could  a  respectable 
pastor's  wife  say  to  such  a  speech?  It  had  the 
genuine  ring.  She  did  not  believe  it  all — not,  that  is, 
the  portions  of  it  which  that  back  part  of  her  mind,  the 
part  that  leapt  about  with  disconcerting  agility  of  ir- 
relevant questioning  when  it  most  oughtn't  to,  called 
the  decorations,  for  how  could  any  one  like  Ingram 
really  think  those  wonderful  things  of  any  one  like  her? 
— but  she  no  longer  suspected  him  of  making  fun.  He 
meant  some  of  it.  What  was  underneath  it  he  meant, 
she  felt.  She  was  scared,  and  at  the  same  time  caught 
up  into  rapture.  Was  it  possible  that  at  last  she  was 
wanted,  at  last  she  could  help  some  one?  He  wanted 
her,  he,  Ingram,  of  all  people  in  the  world;  and  only  a 
few  weeks  ago  she  had  been  going  about  Kbkensee  so 
completely  unwanted  that  if  a  dog  wagged  its  tail  at 
her  she  had  been  glad. 

"It — it's  a  great  responsibility,"  she  murmured  a 
second  time,  while  her  face  was  transfigured  with  more 
than  just  the  sunset. 

It  was.     For  there  was  Robert. 

Robert,  she  felt  even  at  this  moment  in  the  uplifted 
state  when  everything  seems  easy  and  possible,  would 
not  understand.  Robert  had  no  need  of  her  himself, 
but  he  would  not  let  her  go  for  all  that  to  Venice. 
Robert  had  altogether  not  grasped  Ingram's  importance 

370 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  371 

in  the  world;  he  could  not,  perhaps,  be  expected  to,  for 
he  did  not  like  art.  Robert,  she  was  deadly  certain, 
would  not  leave  his  work  for  an  hour  to  take  her  any- 
where for  any  purpose  however  high;  and  without  him 
how  could  she  go  to  Venice?  People  didn't  go  to 
Venice  with  somebody  who  wasn't  their  husband.  They 
might  go  there  with  a  whole  trainful  of  indifferent 
persons  if  they  were  indifferent.  Directly  you  liked 
somebody,  directly  it  became  wonderful  to  be  taken 
there,  to  be  shown  the  way,  looked  after,  prevented 
from  getting  lost,  you  didn't  go.  It  simply,  as  with 
kissing,  was  a  matter  of  liking.  Society  seemed  based 
on  hate.  You  might  kiss  the  people  you  didn't  want 
to  kiss;  you  might  go  to  Venice  with  any  amount  of 
strangers  because  you  didn't  like  strangers.  And  in  a 
case  like  this — "Oh,  in  a  case  like  this,"  she  suddenly 
cried  out  aloud,  flinging  the  paddle  into  the  punt  and 
twisting  her  hands  together,  overcome  by  the  vision  of 
the  glories  that  were  going  to  be  missed,  "when  it's  so 
important,  when  it  so  tremendously  matters — to  be 
caught  by  convention ! " 

He  had  got  her.  The  swift  conviction  flashed 
through  him  as  he  jerked  his  feet  out  of  the  way  of 
the  paddle.  Got  her  differently  from  what  he  had 
first  aimed  at  perhaps,  still  incredibly  without  sex- 
consciousness,  but  she  would  come  to  Venice,  she  would 
come  and  sit  to  him,  he  was  going  to  do  his  masterpiece, 
and  the  rest  was  inevitable. 

"How  do  you  mean?"  he  said,  his  eyes  on  her. 

"To  think  the  great  picture's  never  going  to  be 
painted!" 

"And  why?" 

"Because  of  convention,  because  of  all  these  mad 
rules " 


372  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

She  was  twisting  her  fingers  about  in  the  way  she 
did  when  much  stirred. 

"It's  doomed,"  she  said,  "doomed."  And  she  looked 
at  him  with  eyes  full  of  amazement,  of  aggrievedness,  of, 
actually,  tears. 

"Ingeborg "  he  began. 

"Do  you  know  how  I've  longed  to  go  just  to  Italy?" 
she  interrupted  with  just  the  same  headlong  impul- 
siveness that  had  swept  her  into  Dent's  Travel  Bureau 
years  before.  "How  I've  read  about  it  and  thought 
about  it  till  I'm  sick  with  longing?  Why,  I've  looked 
out  trains.  And  the  things  I've  read!  I  know  all 
about  its  treasures — oh,  not  only  its  treasures  of  art 
and  old  histories,  but  other  treasures,  light  and  colour 
and  scent,  the  things  I  love  now,  the  things  I  know  now 
in  pale  mean  little  visions.  I  know  all  sorts  of  things. 
I  know  there's  a  great  rush  of  wistaria  along  the  wall 
as  you  go  up  to  the  Certosa,  covering  its  whole  length 
with  bunch  upon  bunch  of  flowers " 

"Which  Certosa?" 

"Pavia,  Pavia — and  all  the  open  space  in  front  of 
it  is  drenched  in  April  with  that  divinest  smell.  And 
I  know  about  the  little  red  monthly  roses  scrambling 
in  and  out  of  the  Campo  Santo  above  Genoa  in  Jan- 
uary— in  January!  Red  roses  in  January.  While 
here.  .  .  .  And  I  know  about  the  fireflies  in  the 
gardens  round  Florence— that's  May,  early  May,  while 
here  we  still  sit  up  against  the  stoves.  And  I  know 
about  the  chestnut  woods,  real  chestnuts  that  you  eat 
afterwards,  along  the  steep  sides  of  the  lakes,  miles  and 
miles  of  them,  with  deep  green  moss  underneath,  and 
I  know  about  the  queer  black  grapes  that  sting  your 
tongue  and  fill  the  world  with  a  smell  of  strawberries 
in  September,  and  what  the  Appian  way  looks  like  in 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  373 

April  when  it  is  all  waving  flowery  grass  burning  in 
an  immensity  of  light,  and  I  know  the  honey-colour 
of  the  houses  in  the  old  parts  of  Rome,  and  that  the 
irises  they  sell  there  in  the  streets  are  like  pale  pink 
coral — and  all  one  needs  to  do  to  see  these  things  for 
oneself  is  to  catch  a  train  at  Meuk.  Any  day  one  could 
catch  that  train  at  Meuk.  Every  day  it  starts  and 
one  is  never  there.  And  Kokensee  would  roll  back  like 
a  curtain,  and  the  world  be  changed  like  a  garment,  like 
an  old  stiff  clayey  garment,  like  an  old  shroud,  into  all 
that.  Think  of  it!  What  a  background,  what  a  back- 
ground for  the  painting  of  the  greatest  picture  in  the 
world!" 

She  stopped  and  took  up  the  paddle  ag-xin.  "I 
wonder,"  she  said,  with  sudden  listlessness  :'why  I 
say  all  this  to  you?" 

''Because,"  said  Ingram,  in  a  low  voice,  "you're  my 
sister  and  my  mate." 

She  dipped  the  paddle  into  the  water  and  turned  the 
punt  towards  home. 

"Oh,  well,"  she  said,  the  enthusiasm  gone  out  of  her. 

The  water  and  the  sky  and  the  forests  along  the 
banks  and  the  spire  of  the  Kokensee  church  at  the 
end  of  the  lake  looked  dark  and  sad  going  this  way. 
At  first  she  could  see  nothing  after  the  blinding  light 
of  the  other  direction,  then  everything  cleared  into  dun 
colour  and  bleakness.  'How  one  talks,"  she  said. 
'I  say  things — enthusiastic  things,  and  you  say  things 
— beautiful  kind  things,  and  it's  all  no  good." 

"Isn't  it?  Not  only  do  we  say  them  but  we're 
going  to  do  them.  You're  coming  with  me  to  Venice, 
my  dear.  Haven't  you  read  in  those  travel  books  of 
yours  what  the  lagoons  look  like  at  sunset?" 

She  made  an  impatient  movement. 


374  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"Ingeborg,  let  us  reason  together." 

"I  can't  reason." 

'Well,  listen  to  me  then  doing  it  by  myself." 

And  he  proceeded  to  do  it.  All  the  way  down  the 
lake  he  did  it,  and  up  along  the  path  through  the  rye, 
and  afterwards  in  the  garden  pacing  up  and  down  in 
the  gathering  twilight  beneath  the  lime-trees  he  did 
it.  "Wonderful,"  he  thought  in  that  submerged  por- 
tion of  the  back  of  his  mind  where  imps  of  criticism  sat 
and  scoffed,  "the  trouble  one  takes  at  the  beginning 
over  a  woman." 

She  let  him  talk,  listening  quite  in  silence,  her  hands 
clasped  behind  her,  her  eyes  observing  every  incident 
of  the  pale  summer  path,  the  broken  twigs  scattered  on 
it,  some  withered  sweet-peas  she  had  worn  that  after- 
noon, a  column  of  ants  over  which  she  stepped  care- 
fully each  time.  Till  the  stars  came  out  and  the  owls 
appeared  he  eagerly  reasoned.  He  talked  of  the  folly 
of  conventions,  of  the  ridiculous  way  people  deliber 
ately  chain  themselves  up,  padlock  themselves  to 
some  bogey  of  a  theory  of  right  and  wrong,  are  so  deeply 
in  their  souls  improper  that  they  dare  not  loose  their 
chain  one  inch  or  unlock  themselves  an  instant  to  go 
on  the  simplest  of  adventures.  Such  people,  he  ex- 
plained, were  in  their  essence  profoundly  and  incurably 
immoral.  They  needed  the  straight  waistcoat  and 
padded  room  of  principles.  Their  only  hope  lay  in 
chains.  "With  them,"  he  said,  "sane  human  beings 
such  as  you  and  I  have  nothing  to  do."  But  what 
about  the  others,  the  free  spirits  increasing  daily  in 
number,  the  fundamentally  fine  and  clean,  who  wanted 
no  safeguards  and  were  engaged  in  demonstrating 
continually  to  the  world  that  two  friends,  man  and 
woman,  could  very  well,  say,  travel  together,  be  away 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  375 

seeing  beautiful  things  together,  with  the  simplicity 
of  children  or  of  a  brother  and  sister,  and  return  safe 
after  the  longest  absence  with  not  a  memory  between 
them  that  they  need  regret? 

Why,  there  were — he  instanced  names,  well-known 
ones,  of  people  who,  he  said,  had  gone  and  come  back 
openly,  frankly,  determined  demonstrators  for  the 
public  good  of  the  natural.  And  then  there  were — he 
instanced  more  names,  names  of  people  even  Ingeborg 
had  heard  of;  and  finding  this  unexpectedly  impressive 
he  went  on  inventing  with  a  growing  recklessness, 
taking  any  people  well-known  enough  to  have  been 
heard  of  by  Ingeborg  and  sending  them  to  Venice  in 
twos,  in  haphazard  juxtapositions  that  presently  began 
to  amuse  him  tremendously.  No  doubt  they  had  gone, 
or  would  go  sooner  or  later,  he  thought,  greatly  tickled 
by  the  vision  of  some  of  his  couples.  'There  was 
Lilienkopf — you  know,  the  African  millionaire.  He 
went  to  Venice  with  Lady  Missenden."  He  flung 
back  his  head  and  laughed.  The  thought  of  Lilien- 
kopf and  Lady  Missenden.  .  .  .  "They,  too,  came 
back  without  a  regret,"  he  said;  and  laughed  and 
laughed. 

She  watched  him  gravely.  She  knew  neither  Lilien- 
kopf nor  Lady  Missenden,  and  was  not  in  the  mood  for 
laughter. 

"Even  bishops  go,"  said  Ingram.  "They  go  for 
walking  tours." 

"But  not  to  Venice?" 

"No.  To  shrines.  Why,  Cathedral  cities  are  honey- 
combed with  secret  pilgrims  " 

"But  why  secret?     You  said " 

"Well,  careful  pilgrims.  Pilgrims  who  make  care- 
ful   departures.     One    has    to    depart    carefully,    you 


376  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

know.  Not  because  of  oneself  but  because  of  offend- 
ing those  who  are  not  imbued  with  the  pilgrim  spirit. 
For  instance  Robert." 

"Oh — Robert.  I  see  his  face  if  I  suggested  he  should 
let  me  be  a  pilgrim." 

"But  of  course  you  mustn't  suggest." 

"What?"  She  stood  still  and  looked  up  at  him. 
"Just  go?" 

"Of  course.  It  was  what  you  did  when  you  ran 
away  to  Lucerne.  If  you'd  suggested  you'd  never 
have  got  there.  And  you  did  that  for  merest  fun. 
While  this " 

He  looked  at  her,  and  the  impishness  died  out  of 
his  face. 

"Why,  this,"  he  said,  after  a  silence,  "this  is  the 
giving  back  to  me  of  my  soul.  I  need  you,  my  dear. 
I  need  you  as  a  dark  room  needs  a  lamp,  as  a  cold 
room  needs  a  fire.  My  work  will  be  nothing  without 
you — how  can  it  be  with  no  light  to  see  by?  It  will 
be  empty,  dead.  It  will  be  like  the  sky  without  the 
star  that  makes  it  beautiful,  the  hay  without  the  flower 
that  scents  it,  the  cloak  one  is  given  by  God  to  keep  out 
the  cold  and  wickedness  of  life  slipped  off  because  there 
was  no  clasp  to  hold  it  tight  over  one's  heart.     .     .     ." 

She  began  to  warm  again.  She  had  been  a  little 
cooled  while  he  laughed  by  himself  over  Lady  Missen- 
den's  unregretted  journeyings.  To  go  to  Italy;  to  go  to 
Italy  at  all;  but  to  go  under  such  conditions,  wanted, 
indispensable  to  the  creation  of  a  great  work  of  art; 
it  was  the  most  amazing  cluster  of  joys  surely  that  had 
ever  been  offered  to  woman. 

"How  long  would  I  have  to  be  away?"  she  asked. 
"How  long  is  the  shortest  time  one  wants  for  a  pic- 
ture?" 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  377 

He  airily  told  her  a  month  would  be  enough,  and,  on 
her  exclaiming,  immediately  reduced  it  to  a  week. 

"But  getting  there  and  coming  back " 

"Well,  say  ten  days,"  he  said.  "Surely  you  could 
get  away  for  ten  days?  To  do,"  he  added,  looking  at 
her,  "some  long-delayed  shopping  in  Berlin." 

"But  I  don't  want  to  shop." 

"Oh,  Ingeborg,  you're  relapsing  into  your  choir- 
boy condition  again.  Of  course  you  don't  want  to 
shop.  Of  course  you  don't  want  to  go  to  Berlin.  But 
it's  what  you'll  say  to  Robert." 

"Oh?"  she  said.  "But  isn't  that— wouldn't  that 
be  rather " 

"Why  can't  you  be  as  simple  as  when  you  went 
to  Lucerne  ?  You  wanted  to  go,  so  you  went.  And 
you  were  leaving  your  father  who  tremendously  needed 
you.  You  were  his  right  hand.  Here  you're  nobody's 
right  hand.  I'm  not  asking  you  to  do  anything  that 
would  hurt  Robert.  All  you've  got  to  do  is  to  arrange 
so  that  he  knows  nothing  beyond  Berlin.  Surely 
after  these  years  he  can  let  you  go  away  for  ten 
days?" 

She  walked  with  him  in  silence  down  the  lilac  path 
as  far  as  the  gate  into  the  yard.  She  was  exalted,  but 
her  exaltation  was  shot  with  doubt.  What  he  said 
sounded  so  entirely  right,  so  obviously  right.  She  had 
no  reasoning  to  put  up  against  it.  She  longed  in- 
tolerably to  go.  She  was  quite  certain  it  was  a  high 
and  beautiful  thing  to  go.     And  yet— 

Herr  Dremmel's  laboratory  windows  were  open,  for 
the  evening  was  heavy  and  quiet,  and  they  could  see 
him  in  the  lamplight,  with  disregarded  moths  flutter- 
ing round  his  head,  bent  over  his  work. 

"Good    night,"    Ingram    called    in    at    the    window 


378  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

with  the  peculiar  cordial  voice  reserved  for  husbands; 
but  Herr  Dremmel  was  too  much  engrossed  to  hear. 

Towards  two  o'clock  there  was  a  thunderstorm  and 
sheets  of  rain,  and  when  Ingeborg  got  up  next  morning 
it  was  to  find  the  summer  gone.  The  house  was  cold 
and  dark  and  mournful,  and  it  was  raining  steadily. 
Looking  out  of  the  front  door  at  the  yard  that  had 
been  so  bright  and  dusty  for  five  weeks  she  thought 
she  had  never  seen  such  a  sudden  desolation.  The 
rain  rained  on  the  ivy  with  a  drawn-out  dull  drip- 
ping. The  pig  standing  solitary  in  the  mud  was 
the  wettest  pig.  The  puddles  were  all  over  little 
buttons  made  of  raindrops.  Invariably  after  a  thunder- 
storm the  weather  broke  up  for  days,  sometimes  for 
weeks.  What  would  she  and  Ingram  do  now?  she 
thought;  what  in  the  world  would  they  do  now? 
Shut  up  in  the  dark  little  parlour,  he  unable  to  work, 
and  no  walks,  and  no  punting — why,  he'd  go,  of 
course,  and  the  wonder-time  was  at  an  end. 

"A  week  of  this,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  coming  out 
of  his  laboratory  to  stand  on  the  doorstep  and  rub  his 
hands  in  satisfaction,  "a  week  of  this  will  save  the 
situation." 

"Which  situation,  Robert?"  she  asked,  her  mind 
as  confused  and  dull  as  the  untidy  grey  sky. 

He  looked  at  her. 

"Oh,  yes,"  she  said  hastily,  "of  course — the  experi- 
ment fields.  Yes,  I  suppose  this  is  what  they've  been 
wanting  all  through  that  heavenly  weather." 

"It  was  a  weather,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  "that  had 
nothing  to  do  with  heaven  and  everything  to  do  with 
hell.  Devils  no  doubt  might  grow  in  it,  wax  fat  and 
big  and  heavy-eared,  devils  used  to  drought,  but  cer- 
tainly not  the  kindly  fruits  of  the  earth." 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  379 

And  for  an  instant  he  gave  bis  mind  to  reflection 
on  how  great  might  be  the  barrier  created  between  two 
people  living  together  by  a  different  taste  in  weather. 

Ingram  arrived  at  two  o'clock  in  a  state  of  extreme 
irritation.  He  splashed  through  the  farmyard  with 
the  collar  of  his  coat  turned  up  and  angrily  holding  an 
umbrella.  In  his  wet-weather  mood  it  seemed  to  him 
entirely  absurd  and  unworthy  to  be  wading  through  an 
East  Prussian  farmyard  mess  in  pouring  rain,  beneath 
an  umbrella,  in  order  to  sit  with  a  woman.  He  wanted 
to  be  at  work.  He  was  obsessed  by  his  picture.  He 
was  in  the  fever  to  begin  that  seizes  the  artist  after 
idleness,  the  fever  to  get  away,  to  be  off  back  to  the 
real  concern  of  life — the  fierce  fever  of  creation.  He 
iiad  not  yet  had  to  come  into  the  house  on  his  daily 
visits,  and  when  he  got  into  the  passage  he  was  im- 
mediately and  deeply  offended  by  the  smell  that  met 
him  of  what  an  hour  before  had  been  a  German  dinner. 
The  smell  came  out,  as  it  were,  weighty  with  welcome. 
It  advanced  en  bloc.  It  was  massive,  deep,  enveloping. 
The  front  door  stood  open,  but  nothing  but  great 
space  of  time  could  rid  the  house  in  the  afternoons  of 
that  peculiar  and  all-pervading  smell.  He  was  shocked 
to  think  his  white  and  golden  one,  his  little  image  of 
living  ivory  and  living  gold,  must  needs  on  a  day  like 
this  be  swathed  about  in  such  fumes,  must  sit  in  them 
and  breathe  them,  and  that  his  communings  with  her 
were  going  to  be  conducted  through  a  heavy  curtain  of 
what  seemed  to  be  different  varieties  of  cabbage  and 
all  of  them  malignant. 

The  narrow  gloom  of  the  house,  its  unpiercedness 
on  that  north  side  by  any  but  the  coldest  light,  its 
abrupt  ending  almost  at  once  in  the  kitchen  and  ser- 
vant  part,    struck   him   as   incredibly,   preposterously 


380  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

sordid.  What  a  place  to  put  a  woman  in!  What  a 
place,  having  put  her  in  it,  to  neglect  her  in!  The 
thought  of  Herr  Dremmel's  neglects,  those  neglects 
that  had  made  his  own  stay  possible  and  pleasant, 
infuriated  him.  How  dare  he?  thought  Ingram,  angrily 
wiping  his  boots. 

Herr  Dremmel,  Kokensee,  everything  connected  with 
the  place  except  Ingeborg,  seemed  in  his  changed 
mood  ignoble.  He  forgot  the  weeks  of  sunshine  there 
had  been,  the  large  afternoons  in  the  garden  and  forest 
and  rye-fields,  the  floating  on  great  stretches  of  calm 
water,  and  just  hated  everything.  Kokensee  was  God- 
forsaken, distant,  alien,  ugly,  dirty,  dripping,  evil- 
smelling.  Ingeborg  herself  when  she  came  running  out 
of  the  parlour  to  him  into  the  concentrated  cabbage  of 
the  corridor  seemed  less  shining,  drabber  than  before. 
And  so  unfortunately  active  was  his  imagination,  so 
quick  to  riot,  that  almost  he  could  fancy  for  one  dread- 
ful instant  as  he  looked  at  her  that  there  was  cabbage 
in  her  very  hair. 

"Ingeborg,"  he  said  the  moment  he  was  in  the 
parlour,  "I  can't  stand  this.  I  can't  endure  this  sort 
of  thing,  you  know." 

He  rubbed  both  his  hands  through  his  hair  and 
gnawed  at  a  finger  and  fixed  his  eyes  on  hers  in  a  kind 
of  angry  reproach. 

"I  was  afraid  you  wouldn't  like  it,"  she  said  apolo- 
getically, feeling  somehow  as  though  the  weather  were 
her  fault. 

"Like  it!  And  I  can't  idle  here  any  more.  You 
can't  expect  me  to  hang  on  here  any  more " 

"Oh,    but    I   never    expected "    she    interrupted 

hastily,  surprised  and  distressed  that  she  should  have 
produced  any  such  impression. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  381 

"Well,  it  comes  to  the  same  thing,  your  making 
difficulties  about  coming  away,  your  wanting  such  a  lot 
of  persuading." 

He  stopped  in  his  quick  pacing  of  the  little  room 
and  stared  at  her.  "Why,  you're  giving  me  trouble /" 
he  said,  in  a  voice  of  high  astonishment. 

And  as  she  stood  looking  at  him  with  her  lips  fallen 
apart,  her  eyes  full  of  a  new  and  anxious  questioning, 
he  began  to  pace  about  again,  across  and  round  and  up 
and  down  the  unworthy  little  room. 

"God,"  he  said,  swiftly  pacing,  "how  I  do  hate 
miss-ishness!" 

And  indeed  it  seemed  to  him  wholly,  amazingly 
monstrous  that  his  great  new  work  should  be  being 
held  up  a  day  by  any  scruples  of  any  sort  whatever. 
'This  grey  headache  of  a  sky,"  he  said,  jerking  him- 
self for  a  moment  to  the  window,  "this  mud,  this 
muggy  chilliness " 

"But "  she  began. 

'The  days  here  are  lines — just  length  without 
breadth  or  thickness  or  any  substance " 

"But  surely— till  to-day " 

"I  feel  in  a  sort  of  well  in  this  place,  out  of  sight  of 
faith  and  kindliness — you  shutting  them  out,"  he 
turned  on  her,  "you  deliberately  shutting  them  out, 
putting  the  lid  on  the  glory  of  light  and  life,  being  an 
extinguisher  for  the  sake  of  nothing  and  nobody  at  all, 
just  for  the  sake  of  a  phantom  of  an  idea  about 
Robert " 

"But  surely "  she  said. 

'I'm  bored  and  bored  here.  This  morning  was  a 
frightful  thing.  I  daren't  in  this  state  even  make  a 
sketch  of  you.  I'd  spoil  it.  It'll  rain  for  ever.  I  can't 
stay  in  this  room.    I'd  begin  to  rave " 


382  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"But  of  course  you  can't  stay  in  it.  Of  course  you 
must  go." 

"Go!  When  I  can't  work  without  you?  When 
you're  so  everything  to  me  that  during  the  hours  I'm 
away  from  you  little  things  you've  said  and  done  float 
in  my  mind  like  little  shining  phosphorescent  things  in 
a  dark  cold  sea,  and  I  creep  into  warm  little  thoughts 
of  you  like  some  creature  that  shivers  and  gets  back 
into  its  nest?  I  told  you  I  was  a  parasite.  I  told  you 
I  depend  on  you.  I  told  you  you  make  me  exist  for 
myself.  How  can  you  let  me  beg?  How  can  you  let 
me  beg?" 

They  stood  facing  each  other  in  the  middle  of  the 
room,  his  light  eyes  blazing  down  into  hers. 

"You — you're  sure  I'd  be  back  in  ten  days?"  she 
said. 

And  he  had  the  presence  of  mind  riot  to  catch  her 
to  his  heart. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

FROM  the  moment  she  said  she  would  go  Ingram 
was  a  changed  creature.  He  became  brisk, 
business-like,  cheerful.  Not  a  trace  was  left 
of  the  exasperated  wet  man  who  had  come  round 
through  the  rain,  and  there  were  no  more  poetic  images. 
He  was  reassuringly  like  a  pleased  elder  brother,  a 
brother  all  alert  contentment.  The  table  was  cleared 
by  his  swift  hands  of  the  litter  of  her  English  studies, 
and  the  map  out  of  the  Reichskursbuch  spread  on  it; 
and  with  the  help  of  an  old  Baedeker  his  sharp  eyes 
had  noticed  lurking  in  a  corner  he  expounded  to  her 
what  she  was  to  do.  He  wrote  down  her  train  from 
Meuk  to  Allenstein  and  her  train  from  Allenstein  to 
Berlin;  he  told  her  where  she  was  to  stay  the  night  in 
Berlin,  a  city  he  appeared  to  know  intimately;  and  he 
made  a  drawing  in  pencil  of  the  streets  that  led  to  it 
from  the  station. 

"The  dotted  line,"  he  said,  explaining  his  drawing, 
"is  Ingeborg's  little  footsteps." 

She  was  to  stay  at  one  of  those  refuges  for  timid 
ladies  with  connections  in  the  Church  which  are  scat- 
tered about  Berlin  and  called  Chridliche  Hospiz,  places 
where,  besides  coffee  and  rolls,  there  are  prayers  and  a 
harmonium  for  breakfast.  She  was  to  meet  him  next 
day  at  the  Anhalter  station,  that  happy  jump-off  for 
the  south,  and  he  would  leave  Kbkensee  at  once,  per- 
haps that  evening,  and  wait  for  her  in  Berlin.     They 

383 


384  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

would  proceed  to  Venice  intermittently,  getting  out 
of  the  train  at  various  points  in  order  to  see  certain 
things — there  was  a  walk  he  wanted  to  take  her  across 
the  hills  of  Lake  Maggiore,  for  instance 

"But  I've  only  ten  days,"  she  reminded  him. 

"Oh,  you'll  see.    One  can  do  a  lot "    And  there 

was  Bergamo  he  wanted  to  show  her;  she  would,  he 
assured  her,  greatly  love  Bergamo;  and  certainly  they 
would  go  to  Pavia  if  only  to  see  if  the  wistaria  were 
still  in  flower. 

Her  eyes  danced.  The  sight  of  the  map  and  the 
time-table  was  enough.  She  hung  over  him  eagerly, 
following  his  pointing  finger  as  it  moved  over  moun- 
tains and  lakes.  She  was  like  a  schoolboy  watching 
the  planning  out  of  his  first  trip  abroad.  There  was 
no  room  in  her  for  any  thoughts  but  thoughts  of  glee. 
The  names  were  music  to  her — Locarno,  Cannobio, 
Luino,  Varese,  Berganio,  Brescia,  Venice.  She  lost 
sight  of  the  higher  aspect  of  the  adventure,  the  picture, 
her  position  as  indispensable  assistant  in  the  produc- 
tion of  a  great  work;  her  brain  was  buzzing  with  just 
the  idea  of  trains  and  places  and  new  countries  and 
utter  fun.  After  the  years  of  inaction  in  Kokensee, 
just  to  go  in  a  train  to  Berlin  would  have  been  tre- 
mendous enough  to  set  her  blood  pulsing;  and  here 
she  was  going  on  and  on,  farther  and  farther,  into  more 
and  more  light,  more  and  more  colour  and  heat  and 
splendour  and  all  new  things,  till  actually  at  last  she 
would  reach  it,  the  heart  of  the  world,  and  be  in  Italy. 
"Oh,"    she    murmured,    "but   it's    too   good   to    be 

true " 

And  the  Rigi,  which  up  to  then  had  been  the  high- 
water  mark  of  her  experience,  collapsed  into  a  little 
lump  of  pale  indifferent  mould. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  385 

When  the  tea  began  to  bump  against  the  door  and 
she  went  out  to  help  the  servant,  Ingram  put  every 
sign  of  intending  travel  neatly  away,  and  by  the  time 
Herr  Dremmel  joined  them  there  was  no  hint  of  any- 
thing anywhere  in  the  room  but  sobriety  except  in 
Ingeborg's  eyes.  They  danced  and  danced.  She 
longed  to  jump  up  and  fling  her  arms  round  Robert's 
neck  and  tell  him  she  was  off  to  Italy.  She  wanted  him 
to  share  her  joy,  to  know  how  happy  she  was.  She  felt 
all  lit  up  and  bright  inside,  while  Ingram,  on  the  con- 
trary, looked  forbiddingly  solemn.  He  presently  began 
to  make  solemn  comments  on  the  change  in  the  weather, 
and  after  hearing  Herr  Dremmel's  view  and  sympathis- 
ing with  his  gratification,  said  that  as  regarded  himself 
it  put  an  end  to  his  work  of  preparation  for  the  paint- 
ing of  Frau  Dremmel's  portrait,  and  therefore  he  was 
leaving  the  next  morning  and  would  take  the  oppor- 
tunity, when  Herr  Dremmel  presently  retired  to  his 
laboratory,  of  making  his  farewells. 

Herr  Dremmel  expressed  polite  regrets.  Ingram 
politely  thanked  him.  Ingeborg  felt  suddenly  less  lit 
up,  and  her  eyes  left  off  dancing.  She  wanted,  for 
some  odd  reason,  to  slip  her  hand  into  Robert's.  It 
grew  and  grew  on  her,  the  desire  to  go  and  sit  very 
close  to  Robert.  If  only  he  would  come,  too,  if  only 
he  would  for  once  take  a  holiday  and  come  and  see 
these  beautiful  things  with  her,  how  happy  they  would 
all  be!  It  seemed  a  forlorn  thing  to  leave  him  there 
alone  in  the  rain  while  she  went  jaunting  off  to  Italy. 
Well,  but  he  wouldn't  come;  he  liked  rain;  and  he 
wouldn't  let  her  go,  either,  if  she  were  frankly  to  ask  him 
to.  The  example  of  Lady  Missenden  or  of  any  of  those 
well-known  persons  would  not,  she  knew,  move  him. 
Nor  would  anything  she  could  say  on  the  shameful 


o 


86  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 


absurdity  of  supposing  evil.  Liberal  though  he  was 
and  large  as  were  his  scoffings  at  convention,  he  was  not 
as  liberal  and  large,  she  felt  sure,  as  Ingram,  and  she 
suspected  that  the  conventions  he  scoffed  at  were  those 
which  did  not  touch  himself.  She  could  not  risk  asking. 
She  must  go.     She  must,  must  go.     Yet 

She  got  up  impulsively,  and  on  the  pretext  of  taking 
his  cup  from  him  went  to  him  and  put  her  hand  with  a 
little  stroking  movement  on  his  hair.  Herr  Dremmel 
did  not  observe  it,  but  Ingram  did;  and  after  tea  and 
until  he  left  that  evening  not  to  see  her  again  till  they 
met  at  the  Anhalter  station  in  Berlin,  he  was  amazingly 
natural  and  ordinary  and  cheery,  more  exactly  like  a 
brother  than  any  brother  that  had  ever  been  seen  or 
imagined. 

"Of  course,"  he  said  quite  at  the  last,  turning  back 
from  the  doorstep  before  finally  committing  himself  to 
the  liquid  masses  of  the  dissolved  farmyard — "of  course 
I  can  depend  on  you? " 

She  laughed.  She  stood  on  the  top  step  with  the 
light  of  the  lamp  in  the  passage  behind  her,  a  little 
torch  of  resolution  and  adventure  and  imagination  well 
let  loose. 

"I'm  going  to  Italy,"  she  said,  flinging  out  both 
her  arms  as  though  she  would  put  them  round  that 
land  of  dreams;  and  so  complex  is  man  and  so  simple 
in  his  complexity  that  Ingram  went  away  in  the  wet 
twilight  quite  sincerely  offering  thanks  to  God. 

But  when  it  came  to  the  moment  of  telling  Robert 
about  Berlin  and  shopping,  her  heart  beat  very  uncom- 
fortably. It  was  at  tea-time  the  next  afternoon.  All 
day  she  had  been  trying  to  do  it,  but  her  tongue  refused. 
At  breakfast  she  tried,  and  at  dinner  she  tried,  and  in 
between  she  went  twice  to  the  laboratory  door  and 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  387 

stood  on  the  mat,  and  instead  of  going  in  went  away 
again  on  the  carefullest  toe-tips.  And  there  was 
Ingram  getting  to  Berlin,  got  to  Berlin,  kicking  his 
heels  there  waiting.     .     .     . 

At  tea-time,  after  a  tempestuous  walk  in  the  wet 
during  which,  as  she  splashed  through  sodden  miles  of 
sad-coloured  wilderness,  she  took  her  gods  to  witness 
that  the  thing  should  be  done  that  afternoon,  she  did 
finally  bring  it  out.  She  had  meant  to  say  with  an 
immense  naturalness  that  she  wished  to  go  to  Berlin  in 
order  to  buy  boots.  She  had  thought  of  boots  as 
simple  objects,  quickly  bought  and  resembling  each 
other;  not  like  hats  or  dresses  which  might  lead  later 
on  to  explanations.  And  she  needed  boots.  She  really 
would  buy  them.  It  would,  she  felt,  help  her  to  be 
natural  if  what  she  said  so  far  as  it  went  were  true. 

But  so  greatly  was  she  chagrined  in  her  soul  that 
she  should  have  to  talk  of  boots  at  all  instead  of  telling 
him,  her  Robert,  her  after  all  kind  Robert,  with  delight 
of  Italy  and  of  her  discoveries  in  beautiful  new  feelings, 
that  when  she  had  gulped  and  cleared  her  throat  and 
gulped  again  and  opened  her  mouth  she  found  herself 
not  talking  of  boots  nor  yet  of  Berlin,  but  addressing 
him  with  something  of  the  indignant  irrelevance  of  a 
suffragette  who  because  she  has  been  forcibly  fed  de- 
mands the  vote. 

He  had,  as  his  custom  was,  brought  literature  with 
him,  and  was  sitting  bent  over  his  cup  with  the  book 
propped  against  the  hot-water  jug.  It  was  called 
Eliminierung  der  Minusvarianten,  and  was  apparently, 
as  all  the  books  he  brought  to  meals  also  were  appar- 
ently, absorbing.  The  sound  of  the  dripping  of  the  rain 
on  the  ivy  was  unbroken  at  first  except  by  the  sound  of 
Herr  Dremmel  drinking  his  tea,  and  the  room  was  so 


388  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

gloomy  under  the  pall  of  heavy  sky  that  almost  one 
needed  a  lamp. 

"You  see,"  said  Ingeborg,  most  of  the  blood  in  her 
body  surging  up  into  her  face  as  she  suddenly,  after 
ten  minutes'  silent  struggle,  leaned  across  the  table  and 
plunged  into  the  inevitable,  "my  feeling  so  uncomfort- 
able about  a  simple  thing  like  this  is  really  the  measure 
of  the  subjection  of  women." 

Herr  Dremmel  raised  his  head  but  not  his  eyes  from 
his  book,  expressing  thereby  both  a  civilised  attentive- 
ness  to  anything  she  might  wish  to  say  and  a  continued 
interest  in  the  sentence  he  was  at.  When  he  had 
finished  it  he  looked  at  her  over  his  spectacles,  and 
inquired  if  she  had  spoken. 

"Why  should  I  not  go  and  come  unquestioned?"  she 
asked,  flushed  with  indignation  that  his  prejudices 
should  be  forcing  her  to  the  low  cunning  that  substi- 
tuted boots  for  Italy.     "  You  do." 

He  examined  her  impartially.  "What  do  I  do, 
Ingeborg?"  he  asked  with  patience. 

"Go  away  when  you  want  to  and  come  back  when 
you  choose.  You've  been  quite  far.  You  went  once 
to  a  place  the  other  side  of  Berlin.  Oh,  I  know  it's 
business  you  go  on,  but  I  don't  think  that  makes  it  any 
better — on  the  contrary,  it  isn't  half  as  good  a  reason 
as  going  because  it's  beautiful  to  go,  and  fine  and 
splendid.  And  it  isn't  as  though  I  even  had  to  ask  you 
to  give  me  money  for  it.  I  simply  roll  in  that  hundred 
a  year  you  allow  me.  I  haven't  spent  a  quarter  of  it 
for  years.     My  cupboard  upstairs  is  stuffed  with  notes." 

He  looked  at  her,  but  finding  it  impossible  to  dis- 
cover any  meaning  in  her  remarks  began  to  read  again. 

"Robert " 

With  patience  he  again  removed  his  eyes  from  his 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  389 

book  and  looked  at  her.  Beneath  the  table  she  was 
pressing  her  hands  together,  twisting  them  about  in  her 
lap. 

"Well,  Ingeborg?"  he  said. 

"Don't  you  think  it's  unworthy,  the  way  women 
have  to  ask  permission  to  do  things?  " 

"No,"  said  Herr  Dremmel;  but  he  was  thinking  of 
the  Minusvarianten,  and  it  was  mere  chance  that  he  did 
not  say  Yes. 

"When  husbands  go  away  they  don't  ask  their 
wives'  permission,  and  it  never  would  occur  to  the  wives 
that  they  ought  to.  So  why  should  the  wives  have  to 
ask  the  husbands'?" 

Herr  Dremmel  gazed  at  her  a  moment,  and  then  made 
a  stately,  excluding,  but  entirely  kindly  movement  with 
his  right  hand.  "Ingeborg,"  he  said,  "I  am  not  inter- 
ested."    And  he  began  to  read  again. 

She  poured  herself  out  some  more  tea,  drank  it  hast- 
ily and  hot,  and  said  with  a  great  effort,  "It's  non- 
sense about  permissions.     I — I'm  going  to  Berlin." 

Then  she  waited  with  her  heart  in  her  mouth  and 
both  hands  clutching  the  edge  of  the  table. 

But  nothing  happened,     He  read  on. 

"Robert "  she  said. 

Once  more  he  endeavoured  to  place  his  attention  at 
her  disposal,  dragging  it  away  reluctantly  from  his 
book.     "  Yes,  Ingeborg?  "  he  said. 

"Robert — I'm  going  to  Berlin.*' 

"Are  you,  Ingeborg?"  he  inquired  with  perfect  mild- 
ness.    "Why?" 

"I've  got  to  get  things.     Shop." 

"And  why  Berlin,  Ingeborg?     Is  not  Meuk  nearer?" 

"Boots,"  she  said.  "There  aren't  any  in  Meuk.  I 
never  saiv  any  in  Meuk." 


390  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"And   in    Konigsberg?     That   also   is   nearer   than 
Berlin." 

'You  must  have  heard,"  she  said,  laying  hold,  be- 
cause she  was  afraid,  of  the  first  words  that  came  into 
her  head,  "of  Berlin  wool.  Well,  the  same  thing  exactly 
applies  to  boots." 

He  stared  at  her  as  one  who  feels  about  for  some 
point  of  contact  with  an  alien  intelligence. 

"Naturally  if  you  have  to  go  you  must,"  he  said. 

"Yes.     For  ten  days." 

'Ten,  Ingeborg?     On  account  of  boots? " 

She  nodded  defiantly,  her  hands  beneath  the  table 
twisted  into  knots. 

He  adjusted  his  mind  to  the  conception. 

"Ten  days  for  boots?" 

'Ten,  ten,"  she  said  recklessly,  prepared  to  brave 
any  amount  of  opposition.  "I  want  to  see  a  few 
things  while  I'm  about  it — the  galleries,  for  instance. 
It  isn't  going  to  be  all  boots.  I  haven't  stirred  from 
here  since  our  marriage,  except  to  go  to  Zoppot — it's 
time  I  went — it's  really  ridiculously  time  I  went " 

"But,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  with  the  complete  rea- 
sonableness of  one  who  is  indifferent  and  has  no  desire 
whatever  to  argue,  "but  naturally.  Of  course,  Inge- 
borg." 

"Then — you  don't  mind?" 

"But  why  should  I  mind?  " 

"You — you're  not  even  surprised?  " 

"But  why  should  I  be  surprised?"  And  once  again 
he  reflected  on  her  apparently  permanent  obtuseness  to 
values. 

She  gazed  at  him  with  the  astonishment  of  a  child 
who  has  screwed  itself  up  for  a  beating  and  finds  itself 
instead  being  blessed.     She  felt  relief,  but  a  pained 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  391 

relief;  an  aggrieved,  almost  angry  relief;  such  as  he 
feels  who  putting  his  entire  strength  into  the  effort  to 
lift  a  vessel  he  fears  is  too  heavy  for  him  finds  it  light 
and  empty.  Her  soul,  as  it  were,  tumbled  over  back- 
wards and  sprawled. 

"How  funny!"  she  murmured.  "How  very  funny! 
And  here  I've  been  afraid  to  tell  you." 

But  once  more  he  had  ceased  to  listen.  His  eye  had 
been  caught  by  a  statement  on  the  page  in  front  of  him 
that  interested  him  acutely,  and  he  read  with  avidity 
to  the  end  of  the  chapter.  Then  he  got  up  with  the 
book  in  his  hand  and  went  to  the  door,  thinking  over 
what  he  had  read. 

She  sat  looking  after  him. 

"I  expect — I  think — I  suppose  I  shall  start  to- 
morrow," she  said  as  he  opened  the  door. 

"Start?"  he  repeated  absently.  'Why  should  you 
start?" 

"Oh,  Robert — I  can't  get  there  if  I  don't  start." 

"Get  where,  Ingeborg?"  he  asked,  his  eyes  on  hers 
but  his  thoughts  in  unimaginable  distances. 

"Oh,  Robert — but  to  Berlin,  of  course." 

"Berlin.     Yes.     Very  well.     Berlin." 

And,  deeply  turning  over  the  new  and  pregnant  pos- 
sibilities suggested  to  him  by  what  he  had  just  been 
reading,  he  went  out. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

A  S  THOUGH  to  assure  her  of  what  she  already 
/\  knew,  that  she  was  on  the  threshold  of  the  most 
*l\*  glorious  ten  days  of  her  life,  the  world  when  she 
looked  out  of  the  window  next  morning  was  radiant 
with  sunshine  and  sparkling  with  freshness.  Far  away 
on  the  edge  of  Russia  the  great  rain  clouds  that  had 
come  up  to  Kbkensee  from  the  west  and  folded  it  for 
two  days  in  a  stupor  of  mist  were  disappearing  in  one 
long  purple  line.  The  garden  glistened  and  laughed. 
Sweet  fragrances  from  the  responsive  earth  hurried  to 
meet  the  sun  like  eager  kisses.  If  she  had  needed  re- 
assuring, this  happy  morning  warm  and  scented  would 
have  done  it;  but  now  that  the  night  was  over,  a  time 
when  those  who  are  going  to  have  doubts  do  have  them, 
and  the  dark  sodden  days  when  if  facts  are  going  to  be 
blurred  they  are  blurred,  she  felt  no  scruples  nor  any 
misgivings — she  had  simply  got  to  the  beginning  of 
the  most  wonderful  holiday  of  her  life. 

Everything  was  easy.  Robert  went  away  after  an 
early  breakfast  to  his  fields  to  see  the  improvement 
forty-eight  hours'  soaking  must  have  made,  and  ob- 
viously did  not  mind  her  impending  departure  in  the 
least;  one  of  the  horses,  till  lately  lame,  was  recovered, 
Karl  told  her,  and  able  to  take  her  in  to  Meuk;  the 
servant  Klara  seemed  proud  to  be  left  in  sole  charge; 
the  train  left  Meuk  so  conveniently  that  she  would 
have  time  to  visit  Robertlet  and  Ditti  on  the  way. 

392 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  393 

Singing  she  packed  her  smallest  trunk;  singing  she 
thrust  money  from  the  cupboard  where  it  had  so  long 
lain  useless  into  her  blouse — one,  two,  three,  ten  blue 
German  notes  of  a  hundred  marks  each — while  she 
wondered,  but  not  much,  if  it  would  be  enough,  and 
wondered,  but  equally  not  much,  if  it  would  be  too 
little;  singing  she  pinned  on  unfamiliar  objects  such  as 
a  hat  and  veil,  and  sought  out  gloves;  singing  she  handed 
over  the  keys  to  Klara;  singing  she  stood  on  the  steps 
watching  Karl  harness  the  horses.  All  the  birds  of  Ko- 
kensee  were  singing,  too,  and  the  pig  sunning  itself  in  a 
thick  ecstasy  of  appreciation  also  sang  according  to  its 
lights,  and  it  was  not  its  fault,  she  thought  excusingly,  if 
what  happened  when  it  sang  was  that  it  grunted. 

"Life  is  really  the  heavenliest  thing,"  she  said  to 
herself,  buttoning  her  gloves,  her  face  sober  with  excess 
of  joy.  "The  things  it  has  round  its  corners!  The 
dear  surprises  of  happiness."  And  when  the  buttons 
came  off  she  didn't  mind,  but  excused  them,  too,  on  the 
ground  that  they  were  not  used  to  being  buttoned,  and 
let  her  gloves  happily  dangle.  She  would  have  excused 
everything  that  day.  She  would  have  forgiven  every- 
body every  sin. 

Klara  brought  her  out  a  packet  of  sandwiches  with 
her  luggage,  and  a  little  bunch  of  rain-washed  flowers. 

"How  kind  every  one  is!"  she  thought,  smiling  at 
Klara,  wondering  if  she  would  mind  very  much  if  she 
kissed  her,  her  heart  one  single  all-embracing  Thank 
you  thai  reached  right  round  the  world.  And  then 
suddenly,  just  as  Karl  was  ready  and  the  carriage  was 
actually  at  the  door  and  the  little  trunk  being  put  into 
it,  and  her  umbrella  and  sandwiches  and  flowers,  she 
ran  back  into  the  house  and  scribbled  a  note  to  Robert 
and  put   it  on  the  table   in  his  laboratory  where  he 


394  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

would  not  be  able  to  avoid  seeing  it  when  he  came  in 
that  afternoon. 

"I  can't  not  tell  him,"  was  the  thought  that  had 
winged  her  impulse,  "I  can't  not  tell  the  truth  this 
heavenly,  God-given  day  of  joy." 

"It  wasn't  true  about  the  boots,"  she  wrote,  inking 
her  gloves,  too  frantically  hurried  to  take  them  off. 
"I'm  going  to  Italy  with  Mr.  Ingram — to  Venice — it's 
his  picture — and  of  course  other  things,  too,  on  the  way — 
if  you  think  it  over  you  won't  really  mind — /  must  run 

or  I'll  miss  the  train 

"Ingeborg." 

And  she  climbed  up  into  the  carriage  and  drove  off 
greatly  relieved  and  strong  in  her  faith,  if  you  gave 
him  time  and  quiet,  in  Robert's  understanding  of  a 
thing  so  transparently  reasonable.  She  would  write 
again,  she  said  to  herself,  a  real  letter  from  Berlin  and 
put  her  points  of  view  and  Ingram's  before  him.  Of 
course  that  was  the  right  thing  to  do.  Of  course  a 
highly  intelligent  man  like  Robert  was  bound  ultimately 
to  understand. 

But  her  train  did  not  get  to  Berlin  till  eleven  o'clock 
that  night,  and  when  she  reached  the  Christliche  Hos- 
piz  she  found  a  letter  from  Ingram  telling  her  she  must 
be  at  the  Anhalter  station  next  morning  at  nine,  and 
though  she  meant  to  get  up  early  and  write  she  spent 
the  time,  being  very  tired,  asleep  instead,  and  it  was 
only  when  the  strains  of  a  harmonium  penetrated  into 
her  room  and  wandered  round  her  head  making  slow 
Lutheran  noises  that  she  woke  up  and  realised  how 
nearly  she  was  on  the  verge  of  missing  the  train  to 
Italy. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  395 

Breakfastless  and  prayerless  and  almost  without 
paying  her  bill  she  hurried  forth  from  the  Christliche 
Hospiz,  her  clothes  full  of  an  odd  smell  of  napthalin 
and  the  meals  that  had  been  eaten  there  before  she 
arrived,  the  ancient  meals  of  all  the  yesterdays.  From 
the  smell  she  concluded,  cautiously  and  reluctantly 
sniffing  while  she  put  down  both  windows  of  her  cab, 
that  what  they  had  to  eat  in  the  Christliche  Hospiz 
was  the  chorales  of  the  harmonium  expressed  in  cab- 
bage; and  whether  it  was  the  cab  or  whether  it  was  her 
clothes  she  did  not  know,  but  there  inside  it  with  her 
still  was  cabbage. 

'It's  the  odour  of  piety,"  she  explained  hastily  to 
Ingram  when  he  on  meeting  her  at  the  station  looked 
at  her  with  what  she  thought  a  severe  inquiry. 

"It's  that  you're  within  an  ace  of  missing  the  train," 
lie  said,  catching  hold  of  her  elbow  and  hurrying  her 
down  the  platform  to  a  door  that  still  stood  open,  with 
an  angry  official,  glaring  dreadfully  in  spite  of  his  tip, 
waiting  beside  it  to  shut  it. 

"I'm  so  sorry,"  she  said,  panting  a  little  as  she 
dropped  into  a  corner  of  the  carriage  opposite  him  and 
the  train  slipped  away  from  the  station,  "but  I  couldn't 
get  here  any  sooner." 

"Why  couldn't  you?"  he  asked,  still  severely,  for 
lie  had  spent  a  distressing  and  turbulent  half  hour. 
"You  only  had  to  get  up  in  time." 

"But  I  couldn't  get  up  because  I  was  asleep." 

"Nonsense,  Ingeborg.     You  could  tell  them  to  call 

you." 

"Well,  but  I  didn't  tell  them." 

"And  why  don't  you  button  your  gloves?  Here — 
I'll  button  them." 

;You  can't.     There  aren't  any  buttons." 


<<- 


396  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"What?     No  buttons?" 

"They  came  off." 

"But  why  in  heaven's  name  didn't  you  sew  them  on 
again: 

"Do  buttons  matter?  I  was  in  such  a  tremendous 
hurry  to  start."  And  she  smiled  at  him  a  smile  of  per- 
fect happiness. 

"To  come  to  me.  To  come  to  me,"  he  said,  his 
eyes  on  hers. 

"Yes.     And  Italy." 

"Italy!  Well,  you  very  nearly  missed  me.  What 
would  you  have  done  then?" 

"Oh,  gone  to  Italy." 

"What,  just  the  same?" 

"Well,  Italy  is  Italy,  isn't  it?  Look  at  this  sky. 
Isn't  it  wonderful  to-day,  isn't  it  perfectly  glorious? 
Can  the  sky  in  Italy  possibly  be  bluer  than  this?" 

He  made  an  impatient  movement.  "Choir-boy,"  he 
said;  and  added,  catching  sight  of  her  finger-tips,  "Why 
is  your  glove  all  over  ink?" 

"Because  I  wrote  to  Robert  in  it." 

"What?     You  came  away  without  saying  anything 

at  all?" 

"Oh,  no.  I  said  all  the  things  about  Berlin  and 
shopping,  and  he  didn't  mind  a  bit. " 

"There,  now— didn't  I  tell  you?     But  what  did  you 

write?" 

"Oh,  just  the  truth.     That  I'm  going  with  you  to 

Italy." 

"What?     You  did?" 

"I  couldn't  bear  after  all  to  start  like  that,  in  that 
— that  lying  sort  of  way." 

"And  you  wrote  that  you  were  going  with  me?" 

"Yes.     And  I  said " 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  397 

"And  he'll  find  the  letter  when  he  comes  in?  " 

"Yes.  He  can't  help  seeing  it.  I  put  it  on  his 
laboratory  table,  right  in  the  middle." 

Ingram  leaned  forward,  his  face  flushed,  laughter  and 
triumph  in  his  eyes,  and  caught  hold  of  her  right  hand 
in  its  inky  glove. 

"Adorable  inkstains,"  he  said,  looking  at  them  and 
then  looking  up  at  her.     "You  little  burner  of  ships." 

And  as  she  opened  her  mouth  in  what  was  evidently 
going  to  be  a  question  he  hurried  her  away  from  it  with 
a  string  of  his  phrases. 

"You  are  all  the  happiness,"  he  said,  with  an  energy 
of  conviction  astonishing  at  half-past  nine  in  the  morn- 
ing, "and  all  the  music,  and  all  the  colour,  and  all  the 
fragrance  there  is  in  the  world." 

"Then  you  haven't  noticed  the  cabbage?"  she  asked, 
immensely  relieved. 

He  let  go  her  hand.  "What  cabbage?"  he  asked 
shortly,  for  it  nettled  him  to  be  interrupted  when  he 
was  spinning  images,  and  it  more  than  nettled  him  to 
be  interrupted  in  the  middle  of  an  emotion. 

But  when  she  began — vividly — to  describe  the  inner 
condition  of  the  Christliche  Hospiz  he  stopped  her. 

"I  don't  want  to  talk  of  anything  ugly  to-day,"  he 
said.  "Not  to-day  of  all  days  in  my  life."  And  he 
added,  leaning  forward  again  and  looking  into  her  eyes, 
"Ingeborg,  do  you  know  what  to-day  is?" 

"Thursday,"  said  Ingeborg. 

The  conductor — it  was  a  corridor  train,  and  though 
they  had  the  compartment  to  themselves  the  passage 
outside  was  busy  with  people  squeezing  past  each 
other  and  begging  each  other's  pardons — came  in  to 
look  at  their  tickets. 

"There  is  a  restaurant  car  on  the  train,"  he  said 


398  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

in  German,  giving  information  with  Prussian  care,  a 
disciplinary  care  for  the  comfort  of  his  passengers, 
who  were  to  be  made  comfortable,  to  be  forced  to  use 
the  means  of  grace  provided,  or  the  authorities  would 
know  the  reason  why. 

"Yes,"  said  Ingram. 

"You  do  not  change,"  said  the  conductor,  with 
Prussian  determination  that  his  passengers  should  not, 
even  if  they  wanted  to  and  liked  it,  go  astray. 

"No,"  said  Ingram. 

"Not  until  Basel,"  said  the  conductor  menacingly, 
almost  as  if  he  wanted  to  pick  a  quarrel. 

"No,"  said  Ingram. 

"At  Basel  you  change,"  said  the  conductor  eyeing 
him,  ready  to  leap  on  opposition. 

"Yes,"  said  Ingram. 

"You  will  arrive  at  Basel  at  11.40  to-night,"  said 
the  conductor,  in  tones  behind  which  hung  "Do  you 
hear?     You've  just  got  to." 

"Yes,"  said  Ingram. 

"At  Basel " 

"Oh,  go  to  hell!"  said  Ingram,  suddenly,  violently, 
and  in  his  own  tongue. 

The  conductor  immediately  put  his  heels  together 
and  saluted.  From  the  extreme  want  of  control  of  the 
gentleman's  manner  he  knew  him  at  once  for  an  officer 
of  high  rank  disguised  for  travelling  purposes  in  civilian 
garments,  and  silently  and  deferentially  withdrew. 

"If  there's  a  restaurant  car  can  I  have  some  break- 
fast?" asked  Ingeborg. 

"Haven't  you  had  any?  You  poor  little  thing. 
Come  along." 

She  followed  him  out  into  the  corridor,  he  going 
first  to  clear  people  out  of  the  way  and  turning  to  give 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  399 

her  his  hand  at  the  crossings  from  one  coach  to  the 
next.  The  restaurant  was  in  the  front  of  the  train, 
and  it  required  perseverance  and  the  opening  of  many 
difficult  doors  to  get  to  it.  Each  time  he  turned  to 
help  her  and  gripped  hold  of  her  hand  as  they  swayed 
against  the  sides  and  were  bumped  they  looked  at  each 
other  and  laughed.  What  fun  it  all  was,  she  thought, 
and  how  entirely  new  and  delicious  being  taken  care  of  as 
though  she  were  a  thing  that  mattered,  a  precious  thing! 

He  had  had  breakfast  in  Berlin,  but  he  sat  watch- 
ing her  with  an  alert  interest  that  missed  not  the  small- 
est of  her  movements,  very  reminiscent  in  his  attitude 
and  pleasure  of  a  cat  watching  its  own  dear  mouse, 
observing  it  with  a  whiskered  relish,  its  own  dear  par- 
ticular mouse  that  it  has  ached  for  for  years  before  it 
ever  met  it,  filling  itself  dismally  meanwhile  with  the 
wrong  mice  who  disagreed  with  it — its  mouse  that, 
annexed  and  safely  incorporated,  was  going  to  do  it 
so  much  good  and  make  it  twice  the  cat  it  was  before; 
and  he  buttered  her  roll  for  her,  and  poured  out  her  tea, 
and  did  all  the  things  a  cat  would  do  in  such  a  situation 
if  it  were  a  man,  pleased  that  its  mouse  should  fatten, 
aware  that  anything  it  ate  and  drank  would  ultimately, 
so  to  speak,  remain  in  the  family. 

The  splendid  June  morning,  the  last  morning  of 
June,  shone  golden  through  the  long,  continuous  win- 
dows of  the  car.  The  fields  of  the  Mark  lay  bathed  in 
light.  It  was  early  still,  but  it  had  already  begun  to 
be  hot,  and  haymakers  straightening  themselves  to 
watch  the  train  go  by  wiped  their  faces,  and  the  pru- 
dent cows  were  gathered  in  the  shade  of  trees,  and  in 
the  car  the  ventilator  twirled  and  hummed,  and  the 
waiter  in  his  white  linen  jacket  who  brought  her  straw- 
berries,   each   one   of   which    had    been    examined    and 


400  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

passed  as  fit  and  sound  by  the  proper  authorities  suit- 
ably housed  in  Berlin  in  buildings  erected  for  the  pur- 
pose, was  a  credit  to  the  Prussian  State  Railway  by-law 
which  decrees,  briefly  and  implacably,  that  waiters  shall 
be  cool. 

She  pulled  out  one  of  the  blue  German  hundred 
mark  notes  from  her  blouse  when  he  brought  the  bill, 
and  more  of  them  came  out  with  it. 

"What  on  earth  is  all  that  for?"  Ingram  asked. 

"To  pay  with.  And  you  must  tell  me  how  much 
my  ticket  was  to — wasn't  it  Locarno  you  said  we  got 
out  at?" 

"You  can't  go  about  with  money  loose  like  that. 
Give  it  to  me.    I'll  take  care  of  it  for  you." 

She  gave  it  to  him,  nine  blue  notes  out  of  her  blouse 
and  the  change  of  the  tenth  out  of  a  little  bag  she  had 
brought  and  was  finding  great  difficulty,  so  much  un- 
used was  she  to  little  bags,  in  remembering. 

"I  hope  it's  enough,"  she  said.  "Don't  forget  I've 
got  to  get  back  again." 

He  laughed,  tucking  the  notes  away  into  his  pocket- 
book.  "Enough?  It's  a  fortune.  You  can  go  to  the 
end  of  the  world  with  this,"  he  said. 

"Isn't  it  all  glorious,  isn't  it  all  too  wonderful  to  be 
true?"  she  said,  her  face  radiant. 

"Yes.  And  the  most  glorious  part  of  it  is  that  you 
can't  go  anywhere  now,"  he  said,  putting  the  pocket- 
book  in  his  breast  pocket  and  patting  it  and  looking 
at  her  and  laughing,  "without  me." 

"But  I  don't  want  to.  I'd  much  rather  go  with  you. 
It's  so  extraordinarily  sweet  that  you  want  me  to.  You 
know,  I  never  can  quite  believe  it." 

He  bent  across  the  table.  "  Little  glory  of  my  heart," 
he  murmured. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  401 

The  waiter  came  back  with  the  change. 

"I  wish  Robert  were  here,"  said  Ingeborg,  gazing 
round  her  out  of  the  windows  with  immense  content- 
ment. "If  only  he  could  have  got  away  I  believe  he'd 
have  loved  it." 

Ingram  pushed  back  his  chair  with  a  jerk.  'I  don't 
think  he'd  have  loved  it  at  all,"  he  said;  and  going 
back  through  the  length  of  the  train  to  their  compart- 
ment though  he  helped  her  at  the  difficult  places,  it  was 
by  putting  out  his  hand  behind  him  for  her  to  clutch, 
he  did  not  this  time  turn  round  and  look  into  her  eyes 
and  laugh. 

It  grew  very  hot  as  the  day  wore  on,  and  extremely 
dusty.  The  thunderstorm  that  had  deluged  East 
Prussia  had  not  come  that  way,  and  there  had  been  no 
rain  from  the  look  of  things  for  a  long  while.  The  dust 
came  in  in  clouds,  and  they  were  obliged  to  shut  the 
windows,  but  it  still  came  in  through  chinks  and  settled 
all  over  them  and  choked  them,  and  even  lay  in  the 
delicate  details  of  Ingeborg's  nose.  He  had  made  her 
take  off  her  hat  and  veil,  so  she  had  nothing  to  protect 
her,  and  he  watched  her  with  a  singular  annoyance 
turning  gradually  drab-coloured.  He  wanted  to  lean 
forward  and  dust  her,  he  hated  to  see  her  whiteness 
being  soiled,  it  fidgeted  him  intolerably.  He  himself 
stood  long  train  journeys  badly;  but  though  it  was  so 
hot,  so  insufferably  hot,  she  was  as  active  and  restless 
as  a  child,  continually  jumping  up  and  running  out  into 
the  dreadful  blazing  corridor  to  see  what  there  was  to 
see  that  side. 

They  passed  Weimar;  and  she  was  of  an  intemperate 
zeal  on  the  subject  of  Goethe,  putting  down  the  window 
and  craning  out  to  look  and  quoting  Kennst  Du  das 
Land  wo  die  Citrone  bliiht — quoting  to  him,  who  loathed 


402  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

quotations  even  in  cool  weather.  They  passed  Eisen- 
ach; and  again  she  displayed  zeal,  talking  eagerly  of 
Luther  and  the  Wartburg  and  the  inkpot  and  the 
devil — and  of  St.  Elizabeth,  of  course:  he  knew  she 
would  get  to  St.  Elizabeth.  She  told  him  the  legends — 
told  him  who  knew  all  legends,  told  him  who  had  a 
headache  and  could  only  keep  alive  by  going  into  the 
lavatory  and  plunging  his  head  every  few  minutes  into 
cold  water,  and  she  did  not  in  the  least  mind  when  she 
craned  out  of  the  window  to  look  at  things  that  she 
should  come  back  into  the  carriage  again  with  her  hair 
in  every  sort  of  direction  and  her  face  not  only  dusty 
but  with  smuts. 

At  the  hottest  moment  of  the  day  he  felt  for  a  lurid 
instant  as  if  it  were  not  one  choir-boy  he  was  with  but 
the  entire  choir  having  its  summer  treat  and  being 
taken  by  him  single-handed  for  a  long  dog-day  to  the 
Crystal  Palace;  but  that  was  after  luncheon  in  the 
restaurant  car,  a  luncheon  that  seemed  to  his  fevered 
imagination  to  consist  of  bits  of  live  cinder  served  in 
sulphur  and  eaten  in  a  heaving,  swaying  lake  of  brim- 
stone. Even  the  waiter  who  attended  to  their  table 
was,  in  the  teeth  of  regulations,  a  melted  man;  and 
when  the  inspector  passed  through,  looking  about  him 
with  the  eye  of  a  Prussian  eagle  to  see  that  all  was  in 
order  and  the  standard  set  by  law  was  being  reached 
of  cool  waiters  and  hot  food  and  tepid  passengers,  he 
instantly  pounced  on  the  manifestly  melted  waiter  who, 
unable  to  deny  the  obvious  fact  that  he  was  beaded, 
put  his  heels  together  and  endeavoured  to  escape  a 
fine  by  anxious  explanation  that  he  knew  he  was  in  a 
perspiration  but  that  it  was  a  cold  one. 

They  were  having  tea  when  they  passed  Frankfurt, 
and   dinner  when  they  passed  Heidelberg.     A  great 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  403 

full  moon  was  rising  behind  the  castle  at  Heidelberg, 
and  the  Neckar  was  a  streak  of  light.  The  summer 
day  was  coming  to  an  end  in  perfect  calm.  The  quiet 
roads  leading  away  into  woods  and  through  orchards 
were  starred  on  either  side  with  white  flowers.  In  the 
dusk  it  was  only  the  white  flowers  that  still  shone, 
the  stitchworts,  the  clusters  of  Star  of  Bethlehem,  the 
spikes  of  white  helleborine;  and  all  the  colours  of  the 
day,  the  blue  of  the  chickory  and  delicate  lilac  of  dwarf 
mallows,  the  bright  yellow  of  wood  loosestrife  and  rose- 
colour  of  campions,  were  already  put  out  for  the  night. 

Ingeborg  gazed  through  the  window  with  the  face 
of  a  happy  goblin.  Her  eyes  looked  brighter  than 
ever  out  of  their  surrounding  smuts,  and  her  hair  was 
all  ends,  little  upright  ends  that  stirred  in  the  draught. 
The  dreadful  day,  the  hours  and  hours  of  heat  and 
choking  airlessness,  had  made  no  impression  on  her 
apparently,  except  to  turn  her  from  clean  to  dirty, 
while  Ingram  lay  back  in  his  corner  a  thing  hardly 
human,  wanting  nothing  now  in  the  world  but  cold 
water  poured  over  him  and  he  to  lie  while  it  was  poured 
on  a  slab  of  iced  marble.  But  the  sun  was  down  at 
last,  dew  was  falling  and  quieting  the  dust,  and  the 
final  journey  to  the  restaurant  car  had  been  made,  a 
journey  on  which  it  was  Ingeborg  who  opened  the  doors 
and  nobody  helped  anybody  at  the  crossings.  He  had 
walked  behind  her,  and  had  fretfully  observed  her 
dress  and  how  odd  it  was,  like  old  back  numbers  of 
illustrated  papers,  the  sleeves  wrong,  the  skirt  wrong, 
too  much  of  it  in  places,  too  little  in  others,  but  mostly 
there  was  too  much,  for  it  was  the  year  when  women 
were  skimpy. 

'You'll  have  to  get  some  clothes  in  Italy,"  he  said 
to  her  at  dinner. 


404  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"What  for?"  she  asked,  surprised. 

"  What  for?    To  put  on,"  he  said  with  a  limp  acerbity. 

But  now  at  last  between  Strassburg  and  Bale,  when 
all  glare  had  finally  departed  and  the  lamp  in  their 
compartment  was  muffled  into  grateful  gloom  by  the 
shade  he  drew  across  it,  and  the  windows  were  wide 
open  to  the  great  dusky  starry  night,  and  a  thousand 
dewy  scents  were  stirred  in  the  fields  as  the  train  passed 
through  them,  he  began  to  feel  better. 

At  his  suggestion  she  had  gone  out  and  washed  her 
face,  so  that  he  could  look  at  it  again,  delicately  fair 
in  the  dusk,  with  satisfaction.  And  presently  because 
of  some  curves  the  rails  took  the  moon  shone  in  on  her 
while  he  still  sat  in  shadow,  and  her  face,  turned  up- 
wards to  the  stars  with  the  wonder  on  it  of  her  hap- 
piness, once  more  seemed  to  him  the  most  spiritual 
thing  he  had  yet  found  in  a  woman — unconscious 
spirit,  exquisitely  independent  and  aloof.  He  watched 
her  out  of  the  shadow  of  his  corner  for  a  long  time, 
taking  in  every  curve  and  line,  trying  to  fix  her  look  of 
serenity  and  clear  content  on  his  memory,  the  expression 
of  an  inner  tranquillity,  of  happy  giving  oneself  up  to 
the  moment  that  he  had  not  seen  before  except  in 
children.  To  watch  her  like  that  soothed  him  gradually 
quite  out  of  the  fever  and  fret  of  the  day.  As  his  habit 
was,  he  forgot  his  other  mood  as  if  he  had  never  had  it. 
Growing  cool  and  comfortable  with  the  growing  cool- 
ness of  the  night,  his  irritations,  and  impatiences,  and 
desire — it  had  for  several  hours  in  the  afternoon  been 
paramount  with  him — for  personal  absence  from  her, 
were  things  wiped  out  of  recollection.  He  forgot,  in 
the  quiet  of  her  attitude,  that  she  had  ever  been  restless, 
and  in  her  expressive  and  beautiful  silence  that  she  had 
ever  quoted,  and,  watching  her  whiteness,  that  she  had 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  405 

ever  been  drab.  She  was,  he  thought  considering  her, 
his  head  very  comfortable  now  on  the  cushions  and  a 
most  blessed  draught  deliciously  lifting  his  hair,  like 
the  soft  breast  of  a  white  bird.  She  was  like  diamonds, 
only  that  she  was  kind  and  gentle.  She  was  like  spring 
water  on  a  thirsty  day.  She  was  like  a  very  clear, 
delicate  white  wine.  Yes;  but  what  was  it  she  was 
most  like? 

He  searched  about  for  it  in  his  mind,  his  eyes  on  her 
face;  and  presently  he  found  it,  and  leaned  forward  out 
of  the  shadow  to  tell  her. 

"Ingeborg,"  he  said,  and  at  the  moment  he  entirely 
meant  it,  "you  are  like  the  peace  of  God." 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

AT  BALE  there  was  hurry  and  bustle,  the  half 
L\  hour  they  ought  to  have  had  there  wasted  away 
i.  JL  by  some  unaccountable  loosening  of  the  band- 
ages of  discipline  on  the  German  side  to  four  minutes — 
the  conductor  when  questioned  said  the  engine  had 
gone  wrong,  and  explained,  with  a  shrug  that  was  to 
help  hide  his  shame  in  this  failure  of  the  infallible,  that 
engines  were  but  human — and  again  there  was  an  un- 
dignified scamper  down  steps  and  up  steps  and  along 
platforms,  and  they  arrived  panting,  pushed  in  by 
porters,  only  just  in  time  into  a  compartment  studded 
round  with  sleeping  Swiss. 

Ingram  left  Ingeborg  sitting  temporarily  on  the  edge 
of  the  seat  clasping  her  umbrella  and  coat  and  little 
bag,  while  he  walked  through  the  train  in  search  of  more 
space,  refusing  to  believe  such  a  repulsive  thing  could 
happen  to  him  as  that  he  should  be  obliged  to  travel 
to  Bellinzona  with  four  sleeping  Swiss;  but  the  train 
seemed  to  be  a  popular  one,  else  a  national  festival  was 
preparing  or  some  other  upheaval  that  caused  people 
to  move  about  that  night  in  numbers,  and  all  the  com- 
partments were  full. 

He  went  back  to  Ingeborg  in  a  condition  of  resentful 
gloom.  The  four  Swiss  were  sleeping  in  the  four  corners, 
and  the  carriage  smelt  of  crumbs.  He  opened  the  win- 
dow, and  there  was  an  immediate  simultaneous  resur- 
rection of  the  four  Swiss  into  angry  life.    Ingram,  fluent 

406 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  407 

in  French,  met  them  with  an  equal  volubility,  standing 
with  his  back  to  the  open  window  protecting  it  from 
their  assaults,  while  Ingeborg  looked  on  in  alarm;  but 
the  conductor  when  he  came  pronounced  in  favour  of 
the  four  Swiss.  Pacified,  they  instantly  fell  asleep 
again;  and  Ingram,  at  least  not  taking  care  of  their 
legs,  strode  out  into  the  corridor,  where  he  stood  staring 
through  the  open  window  at  midnight  nature  and 
cursing  himself  for  not  having  broken  the  journey  at 
Bale,  while  Ingeborg  peeped  anxiously  at  his  back 
round  her  coat  and  her  umbrella. 

From  Bale  to  Lucerne  he  was  as  unaware  of  her  as 
if  he  had  never  met  her,  so  very  angry  was  he  and  so 
very  tired.  Then  at  Lucerne  two  of  the  Swiss  got  out, 
and  turning  round  he  saw  her  asleep  in  the  compart- 
ment, tumbled  over  a  little  to  one  side,  still  holding  her 
things,  and  once  again  she  filled  his  heart.  She  was 
utterly  asleep,  in  the  most  uncomfortable  position, 
dropped  away  in  the  middle  of  how  she  happened  to  be 
sitting  like  a  child  does  or  a  puppy;  and  he  went  in  and 
sat  down  beside  her  and  lifted  her  head  very  cautiously 
and  gently  on  to  his  arm. 

She  opened  her  eyes  and  looked  up  at  him  along  his 
sleeve  without  moving,  in  a  sort  of  surprise. 

'This   is   Lucerne,"   he   whispered,   bending   down; 
how  soft  she  was,  and  how  little! 

"Is  it?    Why,  that's  where  Robert  and  I " 

But  she  was  asleep  again. 

She  slept  till  he  woke  her  up  before  Bellinzona,  and 
so  she  never  knew  the  moment  she  had  thrilled  to  think 
of  when  they  would  in  the  dawn  of  the  summer  morn- 
ing come  out  on  the  other  side  of  the  St.  Gothard  into 
what,  in  spite  of  anything  the  Swiss  might  say,  was 
Italy;  and  still  half  asleep,   mechanically  putting  on 


408  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

her  hat  and  pausing  to  rub  her  eyes  while  he  urged  her 
to  be  quick,  she  did  not  realise  where  she  was.  When 
she  did,  and  looked  eagerly  at  the  window,  it  was  to 
turn  to  him  immediately  in  consternation. 

"Oh!"  she  said. 

"Yes,"  said  Ingram,  passing  his  hand  quickly  over 
his  hair,  a  gesture  of  his  when  annoyed. 

It  was  raining. 

They  got  out  on  to  what  seemed  the  most  melan- 
choly platform  in  the  world,  a  grey  wet  junction  with 
a  grey  level  sky  low  down  over  it  and  over  all  the  coun- 
try round  it.  The  Locarno  train  was  waiting,  and  they 
went  to  it  in  silence.  It  was  a  quarter  to  six,  a  difficult 
time  of  day.  The  train,  almost  empty,  jogged  slowly 
through  the  valley  of  the  Ticino.  Down  the  windows 
raindrops  chased  each  other.  On  the  road  alongside 
the  railway,  a  road  bound  also  for  Locarno  and  dreary 
with  brown  puddles,  an  occasional  high  cart  crawled 
drawn  by  a  mule  and  driven  by  a  huddled  human  being 
beneath  a  vast  umbrella.  The  lake  when  they  came  in 
sight  of  it  was  a  yawn  of  mist. 

Ingeborg  stared  out  at  these  things  in  silence.  It 
was  incredible  that  this  should  be  Italy — again  in  spite 
of  anything  the  Swiss  might  say — while  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Alps  all  Germany,  including  Kokensee,  lay 
shimmering  in  light  and  colour.  Ingram  sat  in  the 
farthest  corner  of  the  carriage,  his  hands  thrust  in  his 
pockets,  his  hat  pulled  over  his  eyes,  looking  straight 
in  front  of  him.  He  was  a  mass  of  varied  and  profound 
exasperations.  Everything  exasperated  him,  even  to 
the  long  trickle  slowly  creeping  towards  him  down  the 
floor  from  Ingeborg's  wet  umbrella.  There  was  nothing 
she  could  have  said  or  done  at  that  moment  that  would 
not  have  rubbed  his  exasperation  into  a  flame  of  swift 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  409 

and  devastating  speech.  Luckily  she  said  and  did 
nothing,  but  sat  quite  silent  with  her  face  turned  away 
towards  the  blurred  window  panes.  But  if  she  did  not 
speak  or  do  she  yet  was;  and  he  was  acutely  conscious, 
though  he  never  took  his  eyes  off  the  cushions  opposite, 
of  every  detail  of  her  in  that  grey  and  horrible  light,  of 
her  crumpled  clothes,  her  drooping  smudgedness,  her 
hat  grown  careless,  and  her  hair  in  wisps.  He  had 
wanted  to  show  her  Italy,  he  had  extraordinarily  wanted 
to  show  her  Italy  in  its  summer  magnificence,  and 
there  was — this.  As  a  result  what  he  now  extraor- 
dinarily wanted  was  to  upbraid  her.  He  did  not  stop 
to  analyse  why. 

At  the  hotel  in  Locarno  where  they  went  for  baths 
and  breakfast — he  had  planned  originally  to  show  her 
the  beautiful  walk  from  there  along  the  side  of  the  lake 
to  Cannobio,  but  now  beyond  baths  and  breakfast  he 
had  no  plan — a  person  in  shirt  sleeves  and  a  green 
apron  who  inadequately  represented  the  hall-porter,  for 
it  was  not  yet  seven  and  the  hall-porter  was  still  in 
bed,  unintelligently  and  unfortunately  spoke  to  Inge- 
borg  of  Ingram  in  his  hearing  as  Monsieur  voire  pere. 

This  strangely  annoyed  Ingram.  "It's  your  short 
skirt,"  he  said,  with  suppressed  sulphur.  'You  posi- 
tively must  get  some  clothes.  Dressed  like  that  you 
suggest  perambulators." 

'But  this  is  my  best  dress,"  she  protested.  "It's 
quite  new.  I  mean,  I've  never  had  it  on  before  since  it 
was  made." 

And  with  the  easy  tactlessness  of  one  who  has  not 

yet  learned  to  be  afraid,  she  looked  at  him  and  laughed. 

'Why,"  she  said,  "this  morning  I'm  perambulators 

and  only  last  night,  quite  late  last  night,  I  was  the  peace 

of  God." 


410  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

To  this,  however,  he  did  not  trust  himself  to  reply, 
but  vanished  with  a  kind  of  pounce  into  his  bath- 
room. 

He  came  to  breakfast  clean,  but  in  a  mood  that  could 
bear  nothing,  least  of  all  good  temper.  Ingeborg  was 
by  nature  good  tempered.  She  sat  there  pleased  and 
refreshed — after  all,  he  remembered  resentfully,  she 
had  had  five  hours'  sleep  in  the  train  while  he  had  not 
had  a  wink — gaily  making  the  best  of  things.  She 
pointed  out  the  strength  of  the  coffee  and  the  crispness 
of  the  rolls.  She  asked  him  if  he  did  not  think  it  a 
nice  hotel.  She  did  not  agree  when  he  alluded  to  the 
waiter  as  blighted.  She  predicted  a  break  in  the  weather 
at  eleven,  and  said  that  it  had  always  come  true  what 
her  old  nurse  used  to  tell  her,  that  rain  at  seven  meant 
fine  at  eleven. 

He  hated  her  old  nurse. 

Until  he  had  had  some  sleep,  a  long  steady  sleep, 
he  would,  he  knew,  be  nothing  but  jarred  nerves. 
When  then  after  breakfast  she  inquired,  with  a  cheer- 
ful air  of  being  ready  for  anything,  what  they  were 
going  to  do  next,  he  briefly  announced  that  he  was 
going  to  sleep. 

"Oh?  Shall  I  have  to  go,  too?"  she  asked,  her 
face  falling. 

"Of  course  not." 

"Then,"  she  said  eagerly,  "I'll  go  out  and  explore." 

"What,  in  this  rain?" 

"Oh,  I've  got  goloshes." 

Goloshes !     He  retreated  into  his  room. 

It  annoyed  him  intensely  that  she  should  be  not 
only  ready  but  pleased  to  go  out  for  her  first  walk  in 
Italy  without  him.  He  threw  himself  angrily  on  the 
bed,  rang  the  bell,  and  bade  the  person  who  answered 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  411 

it,  the  same  young  man  in  shirt  sleeves  and  a  green 
apron  who  had  welcomed  them,  tell  Madame  that  if  he 
were  not  awake  by  luncheon  time  she  was  not  to  wait 
for  him,  but  was  to  have  luncheon  at  the  proper  hour 
just  the  same. 

The  young  man  sought  out  Ingeborg  in  her  room. 
She  was  tugging  on  her  goloshes,  one  foot  on  a  chair, 
her  face  flushed  with  effort  and  expectancy. 

"Monsieur  voire  pere "  he  began. 

"Ce  nest  pas  mon  pere,"  said  Ingeborg,  turning  an 
amused  face  to  him  as  she  tugged. 

"Monsieur  voire  mari -" 

"Quoi?  Certainement  pas,"  said  Ingeborg,  who  in 
spite  of  her  prize  for  French  was  unacquainted  with  the 
refinements  of  that  language.  "  Ce  n'est  pas  mon  mari," 
she  said,  energetically  repudiating. 

"Ah — Monsieur  nest  pas  le  mart  de  Madame,"  said 
the  young  man  trippingly. 

"Certainement  pas,"  said  Ingeborg.  "Mon  mari  est 
a  la  maison." 

"Ah — tiens,"  said  the  young  man. 

"C'est  mon  ami,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"Ah — tiens,  tiens,"  said  the  young  man;  and  he 
delivered  his  message  with  a  sudden  ease  and  comfort 
of  manner. 

But  though  the  young  man's  manner  grew  easy, 
after  his  report  of  this  brief  dialogue  the  hotel's  manner 
grew  stiff,  for  on  the  slip  of  paper  presented  to  Ingram 
to  be  filled  in  with  his  name  he  had,  unaware  of  the 
things  Ingeborg  was  saying,  described  himself  and  her 
as  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Dobson,  and  the  hotel,  in  which  Eng- 
lish Church  services  were  held,  and  which  was  at  that 
moment,  though  the  season  was  over,  being  stayed 
in  by  several  representative  English  spinsters,  and  a 


412  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

clergyman  also  from  England  with  a  wife  and  grown-up 
daughters,  most  respectable  nice  ladies  who  all  took 
him  out  every  day  twice,  once  after  breakfast  and  once 
after  tea,  for  a  little  walk — the  hotel  decided,  putting 
its  heads  together  in  the  manager's  office,  that  it  would, 
using  tact,  encourage  the  Dobsons  to  depart. 

It  could  do  nothing,  however,  for  the  moment,  for 
the  lady  had  disappeared  with  an  umbrella  into  the 
wet,  and  the  gentleman,  it  could  hear,  was  sleeping; 
and  this  condition  of  things  continued  for  many  hours, 
the  lady  not  coming  into  luncheon  but  remaining  in 
the  wet,  and  the  gentleman,  it  could  hear,  going  on 
sleeping.  Then  it  became  aware  that  they  were  both 
having  tea  in  a  distant  corner  of  the  slippery  windowed 
wilderness  of  bamboo  chairs  and  tables  described  in  its 
prospectus  as  the  Handsome  Palmy  Lounge,  and  that 
they  had  drawn  up  a  second  table  to  the  one  their  tea 
was  on  and  piled  it  with  undesirably  dripping  branches 
of  the  yellow  broom  that  grew  high  up  in  the  hills,  and 
that  they  were  being  noticed  with  suspicion  by  the 
hotel's  authentic  guests  who  were  used  to  having  their 
tea  in  the  silent  stupor  of  the  really  married,  because 
the  gentleman,  contrary  to  the  observed  habits  of  gen- 
uine husbands,  was  talking  to  the  lady  instead  of  reading 
the  Daily  Mail. 

The  hotel  was  nothing  if  not  competent.  It  could 
handle  any  sort  of  situation  competently,  from  runaway 
couples  to  that  most  unpleasant  form  of  guest  of  all, 
the  kind  that  came  alive  and  went  away  dead.  Full  of 
tact,  it  allowed  the  lady  and  gentleman  to  finish  their 
tea  undisturbed;  then  it  sent  some  one  sleek  to  inform 
them  that,  most  unfortunately,  their  rooms  had  been 
engaged  for  weeks  beforehand  for  that  very  night,  and 
therefore 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  413 

But  before  this  person  could  even  begin  to  be  com- 
petent the  gentleman  requested  him  to  have  a  carriage 
round  in  half  an  hour  as  he  intended  going  on  that 
evening;  and  thus  the  parting  was  accomplished,  as  all 
partings  should  be,  urbanely,  and  the  manager  was 
able  to  display  his  doorstep  suavity  and  bow  and  wish 
them  a  pleasant  journey. 

The  Dobsons  departed  in  a  gay  mood,  with  the 
branches  of  yellow  broom  rhythmically  nodding  be- 
tween them  over  the  edge  of  the  waterproof  apron  that 
buttoned  them  in.  Ingram  had  slept  soundly  for  seven 
hours,  and  felt  altogether  renewed.  He  was  taking 
her  to  Cannobio,  along  the  road  he  had  hoped  to  walk 
with  her  in  sunshine;  but  Ingeborg,  who  had  climbed 
hills  till  her  blood  raced  and  glowed,  saw  peculiar 
beauties  even  in  the  wetness,  and  would  not  believe 
that  sun  could  make  things  lovelier.  Outside  Locarno, 
in  that  flat  and  grassy  place  beyond  the  town  where  the 
beautiful  small  hills  draw  back  for  a  little  from  the  lake, 
and  the  ox-eyed  daisies  grow  so  big,  and  the  roads  are 
strewn  white  with  the  blossoms  of  acacias,  it  stopped 
raining  and  Ingram  had  the  hood  put  down.  The 
mountains  on  the  other  side  of  the  lake  were  indigo- 
coloured,  with  pulled-off  tufts  of  woolly  clouds  lying 
along  them  down  near  the  water.  The  lake  was  a 
steely  black.  The  valley  brooded  in  sullen  lushness; 
and  the  branches  of  broom  they  carried  with  them  in 
the  carriage  cut  through  the  sombre  background  like  a 
golden  knife. 

"The  one  doubt  I  have,"  said  Ingeborg,  breathing 
in  the  warm  scented  air  in  long  breaths,  "is  that  it's 
all  too  good  to  be  true." 

"It  isn't,"  said  Ingrain,  safely  disentangled  for  a 
while  from  the  intricate  effect  on   his  enthusiasms  of 


414  THE  PASTORS  WIFE 

fatigue  and  dirt  and  headaches,  "it's  absolutely  good 
and  absolutely  true.  But  only,"  he  said,  turning  and 
looking  at  her,  "because  you're  here,  you  dear  close 
sister  of  my  dreams.  Without  you  it  would  be  nothing 
but  grey  empty  space  in  which  I  would  just  hang  hor- 
ribly." 

"You  wouldn't.  You  couldn't  not  be  happy  in  this," 
she  said,  gazing  about  her. 

"If  you  weren't  here  I  wouldn't  see  it,"  said  Ingram, 
firmly  believing  it  in  the  face  of  the  fact  that  nothing 
ever  escaped  his  acute  vision.  "I  see  all  this  only 
through  you.  You  are  my  eyes.  Without  you  I  go 
blind,  I  grope  about  with  the  light  gone  out.  You  don't 
know  what  you  are  to  me,  you  little  shining  crystal 
thing — you  don't  begin  to  realise  it,  my  dear,  my  dear 
sweet  Found-at-Last." 

"And  this  morning,"  said  Ingeborg,  smiling  at  him, 
but  only  with  a  passing  smile  on  her  way  to  all  the 
other  things  she  wanted  to  look  at,  "you  said  I  sug- 
gested perambulators." 

For  a  space  they  drove  on  in  silence,  for  he  deplored 
her  trick  of  reminding  him  of  past  moods.  But  beyond 
Ascona,  where  the  mountains  come  down  to  the  lake 
and  leave  only  just  room  enough  between  them  and  the 
water  for  the  road  to  twist  through,  he  recovered 
again,  consoled  by  her  joy  in  the  beauty  of  the  drive 
and  unable  to  see  her  happiness  without  feeling  pleased. 
After  all,  what  he  most  loved  in  her  was  that  she  was, 
so  miraculously,  a  child;  a  child  with  gleams  of  wisdom 
flickering  like  a  lizard's  tongue  in  her  mouth,  and  who 
even  when  she  was  silly  was  silly  also  somehow  in 
gleams — gleams  of  silver  and  sunshine.  And  always 
at  the  back  of  her,  far  away,  hidden  in  what  he  thought 
of  as  depths  of  burning  light,  was  that  elusive  thing  by 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  415 

which  he  was  so  passionately  attracted,  the  thing  he 
was  going  to  paint,  the  thing  his  own  secret  self  crept 
to,  knowing  that  here  was  warmth,  here  was  under- 
standing, her  dear,  dear  little  soul. 

The  evening  at  Cannobio  was  unsatisfactory.  Inge- 
borg  manifestly  enjoyed  herself,  but  it  was  with  an 
absorption  in  what  she  was  seeing  and  an  obliviousness 
to  himself  that  seemed  to  him  both  excessive  and  tire- 
some. Here  was  everything  to  make  two  people  so 
happily  alone  whisper — warmth,  dusk,  the  broad  shadow 
of  plane-trees,  unruffled  water,  lights  romantically 
twinkling  in  corners,  the  twanging  of  a  distant  guitar, 
laughter  and  singing  and  the  glint  of  red  wine  from  the 
little  lit-up  tables  along  the  front  of  the  restaurants 
beneath  the  arcade  at  the  back  of  the  piazza,  and 
he  there,  Ingram,  after  all  a  person  of  real  importance, 
Edward  Ingram  at  her  feet,  only  asking  to  be  allowed 
to  explain  to  her  in  every  variety  of  phrase  how  sweet 
she  was.  But  she  was  dead  to  her  opportunities.  There 
wasn't  another  woman  in  Europe,  he  told  himself 
angrily,  who  would  not  have  whispered. 

Thev  wandered  out  of  their  hotel  after  dinner,  a 
square  pink  Italian  albergo  facing  the  lake  where  the 
town  left  off,  and  free,  as  indeed  Cannobio  altogether 
was,  from  transitory  English  with  their  awful  eyes,  and 
they  strolled  about  looking  at  things.  He  did  not  look 
much,  for  he  knew  these  Italian  sights  and  sounds 
by  heart,  and  at  that  moment  only  wanted  to  look  at 
her;  but  the  least  little  thing  caught  her  attention 
away  from  him  absolutely,  to  the  exclusion  of  anything 
he  might  be  saying.  Positively  she  even  preferred  to 
listen  to  the  throb  of  the  steamer  coining  nearer  from 
the  other  end  of  the  lake  than  to  him;  and  she  inter- 
rupted him  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence  that  intimately 


416  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

concerned  herself  to  stand  still  in  the  piazza  and  ask 
him  what  he  thought  of  the  smells. 

"I  don't  think  about  them  at  all,"  he  said  shortly. 

"Oh,  but  there  are  such  a  lot  of  them,"  she  exclaimed, 
sorting  them  out  with  her  lifted  nose.  "There's  the 
smell  of  roses,  and  the  smell  of  lake,  and  the  smell  of 
frying,  and  there's  more  roses,  and  then  there's  garlic, 
and  then  there's  a  quite  dim  one,  and  then  there's  a 
little  puff  of  something  else — I  don't  know  what — sheer 
Italy,  I  expect.  /  never  smelt  so  many  smells,"  she 
ended,  with  a  gesture  of  astonishment. 

He  tried  to  get  her  away  from  them.  He  led  her  to 
a  bench  beneath  a  plane-tree.  "Come  and  sit  by  me 
and  I  will  tell  you  things,"  he  said,  luring  her.  "Look, 
there's  the  moon  got  free  from  the  clouds — and  do  you 
see  how  the  coloured  lights  of  the  steamer  that's  coming 
shine  right  down  a  ladder  of  light  into  the  water?  And 
what  do  you  think  of  the  feel  of  the  air,  little  sister? 
Isn't  it  soft  and  gentle?  Doesn't  it  remind  you  of  all 
kind  and  tender  things?" 

"But  much  the  most  wonderful  of  anything  are  these 
smells,"  she  said,  absorbed  in  them.  "There  are  at 
least  twelve  different  ones." 

"Never  mind  them.    I  want  to  talk." 

"But  they're  so  amusing,"  she  said.  "There  are 
interesting  ones,  and  exciting  ones,  and  beautiful  ones, 
and  disquieting  ones,  and  awful  ones,  and  too-perfect- 
for-anything  ones,  and  they're  all  chasing  each  other 
up  and  down  and  round  and  round  us." 

He  lit  a  cigarette.  "There,"  he  said,  "that  will 
blot  the  whole  lot  of  them  into  only  one,  and  you'll 
talk  to  me  reasonably.  Let  us  talk  while  we  can,  my 
dear.  In  a  little  time  we  shall  be  dead  to  all  feeling 
for  ever  and  ever." 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  417 

"Yes,  we  shall  be  little  shreds  of  rottenness,"  she 
said  placidly. 

"God,   who  wastes   a  sunset  every   night "   he 

said,  getting  up  to  stamp  on  the  match  he  had  thrown 
away — 

"If  they  were  mine,"  she  interrupted,  "I'd  keep 
them  all  in  a  gallery  or  a  portfolio." 

" — understands,  I  suppose,"  he  went  on,  sitting 
down  again,  "why  such  dear  things  as  this  evening 
here,  this  time  of  being  alone  together  here,  should  end 
and  be  forgotten." 

"As  long  as  I  live,"  she  said  with  earnestness,  "it 
will  not  be  forgotten.  All  my  other  memories  will  be 
like  a  string  of — oh,  just  beads  and  nuts  and  fir-cones, 
till  I  get  to  this  one,  and  then  on  the  string  there'll  be 
suddenly  a  shining  jewel." 

"Really?  Really?"  he  murmured,  stopping  to  look 
into  her  eyes,  revived  by  this  speech.  "Little  flame  in 
my  heart,  really?" 

"Oh,"  said  Ingeborg  dreamily,  in  her  husky,  soft 
voice,  "but  the  wonderfullest  thing,  the  wonderf idlest 
jewel.     My  first  Italian  town — Cannobio.    ..." 

He  ceased  to  be  revived.  He  smoked  in  silence. 
The  effect  on  her  of  Italy  was  as  surprising  as  it  was 
unexpected.  At  Kokensee  she  had  been  entirely  con- 
centrated on  him,  eagerly  listening  only  to  him,  drink- 
ing in  only  what  he  said,  worshipping.  Here  she  seemed 
possessed  by  a  rage  for  any  sights  and  sounds  merely 
because  they  were  new.  There  had  been  moments  from 
the  very  start  in  Berlin  when  he  almost  feltof  secondary 
interest,  and  they  appeared  to  be  becoming  permanent. 
It  was  disturbing.  It  was  incredible.  It  was  grotesque. 
Perhaps  it  would  be  as  well  to  take  her  away  from  the 
lakes,  from  all  thatpartof  the  country  which  apparently 


418  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

caught  her  imagination  on  its  most  sensitive  side.  Per- 
haps Milan  for  a  while,  with  pavements  and  mu- 
seums. 

"Please,  will  you  give  me  some  of  that  money?" 
she  asked  across  his  reflections. 

'Which  money?"  he  said,  looking  at  her. 

"My  money." 

"What  on  earth  for?" 

"I  want  to  send  Robert  a  picture  postcard." 

He  threw  his  cigarette  away.  "It  would  be  most 
improper,"  he  said,  passing  his  hand  rapidly  over  his 
hair.     "Highly  improper." 

"Improper?"  she  echoed,  staring  at  him.  "To  send 
Robert  a  picture  postcard?" 

"Grossly.     It  simply  isn't  done." 

"What?  Not  send  Robert — but  he'd  like  to  see 
where  we've  got  to." 

"For  heaven's  sake  don't  talk  about  Robert,"  he  ex- 
claimed, getting  up  quickly;  the  idea  of  the  picture  post- 
card profoundly  shocked  him. 

"Not  talk  about  him?"  she  repeated,  staring  at  him 
in  astonishment.     "But  he's  my  husband." 

"Exactly.     That's  what  makes  him  so  improper." 

"What?  Why,  I  thought  husbands  were  just  the 
very  things  that  never  could  be  improper." 

"Ingeborg,"  he  said,  walking  angrily  up  and  down  in 
front  of  her,  "are  you  or  are  you  not  being  taken  care 
of  on  this — this  holiday  by  me?  Are  you  or  are  you 
not  travelling  with  me?" 

"Yes,  I  know.  But  I  don't  see  why  I  shouldn't 
send  Rob " 

"Well,  then,  if  you  don't  see  you  must  believe. 
You've  just  got  to  believe  me  when  I  tell  you  certain 
things  are  impossible." 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  419 

"But  Robert " 

"Good  heavens,  don't  talk  of  Robert.  If  I  beg  you 
not  to,  if  I  tell  you  it  spoils  things  for  me,  if  I  ask  you  as 

a  favour "     He  stopped  in  front  of  her.     "My  dear, 

my  little  mate,  my  everything  that's  central  and  alive 
among  the  husks " 

"Of  course  I  won't,  then.  At  least,  I'll  try  to  re- 
member not  to,"  she  said,  looking  at  him  with  a  smile 
that  had  effort  in  it  as  well  as  surprise.  "But  I  don't 
see  why  a  picture  postcard " 

The  steamer  they  had  seen  for  so  long,  the  last  one 
of  the  day  from  Arona  to  Locarno,  was  nearing  the  pier, 
and  the  piazza  suddenly  swarmed  with  busy  groups  pre- 
paring to  go  on  it  or  see  each  other  off. 

"Let's  come  away,"  said  Ingram,  impatiently.  "Let's 
come  away!"  he  repeated  with  a  stamp  of  his  foot.  "I 
hate  this  crowd." 

She  got  up  and  walked  beside  him  towards  the  hotel, 
her  eyes  on  the  ground. 

"I  really  can't  see  why  I  shouldn't  send  Robert " 

she  began. 

"Oh,  damn  Robert!"  he  exclaimed  violently. 

She  looked  at  him.  "Damn  Robert?"  she  echoed, 
immensely  surprised.     "But — don't  you  like  Robert?" 

"No,"  said  Ingrain.  "No,"  he  said,  even  louder. 
"Not  here.  Not  now.  Now  don't,"  he  added  in  ex- 
treme irritation  as  he  saw  her  mouth  opening,  "ask  me 
why,  don't  ask  me  to  explain.  Go  to  bed,  Ingeborg. 
It's  time  all  children  under  ten  were  in  bed.  And  get 
up  early,  please,  because  we're  going  to  start  the  first 
thing  for — anyhow,  for  somewhere  else." 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 

INGRAM  was  not  only  a  great  painter,  he  was 
practised  in  minor  accomplishments,  and  among 
them  was  the  art  of  running  away.  He  had 
done  it  several  times  and  had  attained  fluency.  In- 
deed, so  easy  had  practice  made  it  that  it  grew  to  be 
hardly  running  so  much  as  walking.  He  walked  away, 
at  last  quite  leisurely,  from  an  uncommenting  wife  to  a 
lady  whose  affection  for  him  was  invariably  already  so 
great  that  there  was  nothing  left  for  it  to  do  but  to 
decline;  and  when  it  had  declined,  assisted  and  encour- 
aged in  various  ways  by  him,  the  chief  cooling  factor 
being  his  expressed  impatience  to  get  to  his  painting 
again  undisturbed  by  non-essentials — each  lady  found 
it  cooling  to  be  called  a  non-essential — he  avoided  the 
part  that  is  sometimes  a  little  difficult,  the  part  in  which 
recriminations  are  apt  to  gather  like  clouds  about  a 
sunset,  the  part  that  lies  round  ends,  by  skilful  treat- 
ment, by  a  gradual  surrounding  of  her  who  was  now  not 
so  much  a  lover  as  a  patient  with  an  atmosphere  of 
affection  for  her  home.  She  came  by  imperceptible 
degrees  to  thirst  for  her  home.  She  came  to  thirst,  and 
such  was  his  skill  that  she  thirsted  healthily,  for  her 
husband  or  her  father  or  whoever  it  was  she  had  left,  for 
worries,  catastrophes,  disgrace — for  anything  so  long  as 
it  was  so  obliging  as  not  to  be  love.  If  poorer  in  other 
ways  she  departed  at  least  richer  in  philosophy,  without 
a  trace  of  jealousy  of  what  he  might  do  next,  not  mind- 

420 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  421 

ing  what  he  did  if  only  she  did  not  have  to  do  it,  too, 
and  he,  until  such  time  as  he  again  was  lured  from  paths 
of  austerity  and  work  by  the  hope  that  he  had  found  the 
one  predestined  mate,  enjoyed  the  condition  in  which  he 
was  altogether  happiest,  the  freedom  of  spirit  that  dis- 
dains love. 

But  how  different  from  those  comfortable  excur- 
sions, as  straightforward  and  as  uneventful  to  him  in 
their  transitory  salubrious  warming  as  bread  and  milk, 
was  this  running  away!  It  was  distressingly  different. 
Almost,  except  that  he  had  no  desire  to  laugh,  ridicu- 
lously different.  The  first  step,  the  process  of  the 
actual  removal  from  Kbkensee  to  Berlin,  from  legality 
to  illicitness,  had  in  its  smoothness  been  positively  glib ; 
and  he  had  supposed  that,  once  alone  together,  love- 
making,  which  was  the  very  marrow  of  running  away — 
else  why  run? — would  follow  with  a  similar  glibness. 
Nothing,  however,  seemed  less  inclined  to  follow.  The 
only  things  that  did  follow  were  two  confused  exasper- 
ating days  in  which  his  moods  varied  with  every  hour, 
almost  at  last  with  everything  she  said.  The  capacious- 
ness of  her  beliefs  and  acceptances  amazed  him.  They 
were  as  capacious  as  her  enthusiasms.  She  believed 
so  firmly  what  he  had  told  her  over  there  away  in 
Kokensee,  where  of  course  a  man  had  to  say  things  in 
order  to  get  a  beginning  made,  about  the  friendly  fre- 
quent journeyings  of  other  people,  she  had  so  heartily 
accepted  his  assurance  that  it  was  absurd  and  disgrace- 
ful in  its  suggestion  of  evil-mindedness  not  to  travel 
frankly  anywhere  with  anybody — "Are  we  not  the 
children  of  light,  you  and  I?"  he  had  asked  her — the 
things  a  man  says!  he  thought;  but  they  should  not  be 
brought  up  against  him  in  this  manner,  clad  in  an  in- 
vincible armour  of  acceptance —     "And  shall   we  be 


422  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

hindered  in  our  free  comings  and  goings  by  the  dingy 
scruples  of  those  heavy  others,  the  groping  and  afraid 
children  of  darkness?" — that  plainly  the  idea  that  she 
was  doing  anything  even  remotely  wrong  had  not  oc- 
curred to  her.  The  basis  of  her  holiday  was  this  belief 
in  frank  companionship.  She  had  no  difficulty,  he  ob- 
served, himself  infinitely  fretted  by  this  constant  close- 
ness to  her,  in  being  just  a  frank  companion.  She  was 
so  carelessly  secure  in  friendship,  so  empty  of  any 
thought  beside,  that  she  could  and  did  say  things  to 
him  which  said  by  any  other  woman  in  the  same  situa- 
tion would  have  instantly  led  to  lovemaking.  But 
Ingram,  who  was  fastidious,  could  no  more  make  love 
to  her,  violently  begin,  robustly  stand  no  nonsense,  so 
long  as  she  was  steeped  in  obliviousness,  than  he  could 
to  a  child  or  a  chair.  There  must  be  some  response, 
some  consciousness.  Her  obtuseness  to  the  real  situa- 
tion was  so  terribly  healthy  minded  that  it  was  almost 
a  disease ;  the  awful  candour  of  soul  of  bishops'  daughters 
and  pastors'  wives  appalled  him. 

For  three  days  the  weather  continued  heavy,  press- 
ing down  on  his  eyes.  He  did  not  sleep.  He  was  all 
nerves.  In  the  morning,  a  time  he  had  not  yet  known 
her  in,  for  at  Kokensee  they  were  together  only  in  the 
afternoons,  she  produced  the  effect  on  him  of  some  one 
different  and  in  some  subtle  annoying  way  strange. 
Was  it  because  she  flickered  more  in  the  mornings? 
He  could  not  describe  it  better  than  that — she  flickered. 
She  always  flickered  mentally,  her  thoughts  just  giving 
each  subject  a  little  lick  and  then  blowing  off  it  to 
something  else,  but  in  the  afternoons  and  evenings  the 
flickering  was  often  beautiful,  or  at  those  warmer  more 
indulgent  hours  it  seemed  so,  and  in  the  morning  it  was 
not.     A  man  in  the  morning  wants  somebody  pinned 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  423 

down  for  a  companion,  somebody  reasonable  and  fixed. 
Nothing  but  a  rather  silent  reasonableness,  and  if 
enunciations  are  unavoidable  brief  ones,  go  well  with 
coffee  and  with  rolls.  At  breakfast  he  found  he  could 
hardly  speak  to  her  so  exceedingly  then  was  she  on  his 
nerves — her  dreadful  healthy  restedness  when  he  had 
been  tossing  all  night,  her  fearful  readiness  for  the  new 
day  when  he  had  not  even  begun  to  recover  from  the 
old  one,  her  regularity  of  enthusiasm,  her  punctual 
happiness.     And  every  evening  he  was  in  love  with  her. 

He  was  exasperated.  This  being  with  her  among 
the  hills  and  lakes  of  Italy  that  he  had  thought  of  as 
going  to  be  the  sweetest  time  he  had  known  was  sheer 
exasperation;  for  even  in  the  evenings  when  he  was 
in  love  with  her — the  condition,  indeed,  set  in  at  any 
time  from  tea  onwards,  and  could  on  occasion  be  induced 
before  tea  if  she  happened  to  say  the  right  things — he 
was  irritably  in  love,  and  hardly  knew  whether  it  would 
give  him  more  satisfaction  to  shake  her  or  to  kiss  her. 
And  annoying  and  perplexing  as  her  untroubled  con- 
science was  it  was  yet  not  so  annoying  and  perplexing 
as  her  wild  joy  in  Italy.  Who  would  not  be  galled  by 
the  discovery  that  he  has  become  a  background?  Who 
would  have  supposed  that  she  who  in  Kokensee  thought 
him  so  wonderful,  so  clearly  realised  who  he  was,  who 
walked  with  him  there  in  the  rye-fields  and  offered 
him  every  sort  of  incense  that  sweet  words  could  invent, 
would,  let  loose  in  Italy,  take  the  background  he  had  so 
carefully  chosen  for  his  lovemaking  and  hug  it  to  her 
heart  and  be  absorbed  in  it  and  adore  it  beyond  reason, 
and  that  he  himself  would  turn  into  the  background- 
incredible  as  it  seemed,  into  just  the  background  of  his 
own  background? 

When  he  took  her  up  into  the  hills,  into  solitary 


424  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

places  where  the  chestnut  woods  went  on  for  miles  and 
no  one  ever  came  but  charcoal-burners,  he  was  not,  as 
it  were,  there.  When  he  took  her  on  the  lake  in  a  sail- 
ing-boat and  they  hung  motionless  on  the  goodwill  of 
the  wind,  he  was  not  there,  either.  When  they  rested 
after  a  hot  climb,  deep  in  some  high  meadow  not  yet 
reached  by  the  ascending  haymakers,  and  through  the 
stalks  of  its  bee-haunted  flowers,  its  delicate  bending 
scabious  and  frail  ragged-robins,  could  see  little  bits 
of  lake  far  below  and  the  white  villages  on  the  moun- 
tains opposite,  and  the  whole  world  was  only  asking 
to  be  made  a  frame  of  for  love,  where,  he  inquired  of 
himself,  in  the  picture  that  was  in  her  mind  and  irradi- 
ating her  eyes,  was  he?  He  had  not  imagined,  so  far 
behind  him  were  his  own  discoveries  of  the  new,  that 
any  one  could  be  so  greedily  absorbed.  Watching  her, 
while  she  watched  everything  except  him,  he  decided 
he  would  take  her  to  Milan.  He  would  try  something 
ugly.  Milan  this  heavy  hot  weather  ought  to  give  her 
back  to  him  if  anything  would.  They  would  stay  in  a 
street  where  there  were  tramcars  and  noises,  and  they 
would  frequent  museums.  They  would  walk  much  on 
pavements,  and  have  their  food  in  English  tea-rooms. 
While  the  cure  was  in  progress  she  might  be  getting 
herself  some  decent  clothes,  for  really  her  clothes  were 
distressing,  and  when  it  was  accomplished,  and  she  was 
thoroughly  bored  with  things,  and  had  come  back  to 
being  aware  of  him,  he  would  carry  her  off  to  Venice 
and  begin  work — work,  the  best  thing  in  life,  the  one 
thing  that  keeps  on  yet  is  never  monotonous,  the  su- 
preme thing  always  new  and  joyful.  But  he  was  afraid 
of  Venice.  Venice  was  too  beautiful.  She  would  not 
sit  quiet  there  while  he  painted  her;  she  would  want  to 
go  out  and  look.     Impossible  to  take  her  there  until 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  425 

she  had  learned  to  blot  out  everything  in  the  world  with 
his  image  alone.  This  blotting  out,  he  perceived,  would 
have  to  be  achieved  in  Milan,  and  quickly.  He  was 
starving  for  his  work.  So  acute  was  his  hunger  to 
begin  the  great  picture  that  right  underneath  all  his 
other  emotions  and  wishes  and  moods  was  a  violent 
impatience  at  being  kept  from  it  by  what  his  subcon- 
sciousness alluded  to  with  resentful  incorrectness  as  a 
parcel  of  women. 

It  was  the  evening  at  Luino  that  he  definitely  decided 
on  Milan. 

They  had  walked  that  day  along  the  wooded  paths 
that  lead  ultimately  across  to  Ponte  Tresa,  and  she 
had  once  again,  on  returning  to  Luino  and  seeing  a 
revolving  column  of  picture  postcards  outside  a  tobac- 
conist's shop  and  catching  sight  of  some  that  showed 
the  place  of  rocks  and  falling  water  in  which  they  had 
eaten  their  luncheon,  wanted  to  send  one  to  Robert. 
She  had  not  said  so,  but  she  had  hovered  round  the 
column  looking  hungry.  Picture  postcards  seemed  to 
have  a  dreadful  fascination  for  her;  and  as  for  Ingram, 
the  mere  sight  of  them  at  this  point  of  their  journey 
made  him  see  red.  He  had  instantly  observed  her 
hungry  hovering,  and  had  flared  out  into  a  leaping 
rebuke  in  which  there  was  more  of  the  angry  school- 
master than  the  lover.  He  had  felt  it  himself,  and  seen, 
quick  as  he  was  to  see,  a  little  look  of  surprised  and 
questioning  fear  for  a  moment  in  her  eyes. 

'Well,  it's  because  you're  always  thinking  of  Rob- 
ert," he  flashed  at  her  in  an  attempt  that  caught  fire  on 
the  way  to  apologise. 

"Not  always'*  she  said  hesitatingly,  with  a  smile 
that  for  the  first  time  was  propitiating;  and  the  ac- 
cidents of  the  pavement  making  him  walk  for  a  few 


426  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

yards  in  front  of  her  she  found  herself  looking  at  his 
back,  his  high  thin  shoulders  and  the  rims  of  his  ears, 
with  a  startled  feeling  of  entire  strangeness. 

A  dim  thought  rose  and  disappeared  again  some- 
where in  the  back  of  her  mind,  a  whisper  of  a  thought, 
hardly  breathed  and  gone  again — "I'm  used  to  Robert." 

He  took  her  to  Milan  next  day.  That  loud  and 
sweltering  city  was,  by  its  hot  dulness,  to  bore  her  into 
awareness  of  him,  to  toss  her  by  sheer  elimination  of 
other  interests  to  his  breast.  Inexorably  he  kept  her 
on  the  steamer  and  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  her  prayers 
that  they  might  land  when  it  stopped  at  attractive 
villages  on  its  journey  down  the  lake.  She  thought 
this  unreasonable;  for  why  come  at  all  to  these  lovely 
places,  come  so  close  that  one  could  almost  touch  them, 
and  then  whisk  away  and  hardly  let  one  look?  And 
she  could  not  help  feeling,  after  he  had  been  short  with 
her  about  the  Borromean  Islands,  at  one  of  which  un- 
fortunately the  steamer  touched,  that  it  would  be  both 
blessed  and  splendid  to  travel  round  here  alone — free, 
able  to  get  out  at  islands  if  one  wanted  to. 

"Yes,  those  are  islands,"  he  said,  when  first  they 
loomed  on  her  enraptured  gaze.  "Yes,  one  can  land 
on  them,  but  we're  not  going  to.  Yes,  yes,  beautiful 
— but  we've  got  to  catch  the  train." 

She  began  to  turn  a  slightly  perplexed  attention  to 
him.  Surely  he  was  different  from  what  he  was  at 
Kbkensee!  And  there  were  the  Borromean  Islands 
slipping  away,  the  beautiful  islands;  there  they  were 
being  passed,  going  out  of  her  life;  it  was  unlikely  she 
would  ever  see  them  again. 

To  Ingram  on  that  leaden  afternoon  the  lake  looked 
like  a  coffin,  and  the  islands  as  dull  and  shabby  as  three 
nails  in  it;  to  Ingeborg  they  looked  like  three  little 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  427 

miracles  of  God.  Just  as  he  who  for  the  first  time  goes 
abroad  would  give  up  Rome  if  he  might  stop  at  Calais, 
so  did  Ingeborg  hanker  after  detailed  exploration  of 
new  places  she  was  inexorably  whisked  away  from. 
The  Borromean  Islands  were  beautiful,  but  if  they  had 
been  dull  she  still  would  have  hankered  after  them. 
Beautiful  or  dull  they  were  different  from  Kokensee; 
and  when  the  travelled  Ingram  put  his  hopes  in  Milan 
he  did  not  realise  how  great  on  Ingeborg  after  her 
strictly  cloistered  Kokensee  existence  was  the  effect 
of  the  merely  different.  The  platform  at  Arona,  the 
flat  fields  the  train  presently  lumbered  across,  the 
factories  and  suburbs  of  Milan,  the  noisy  streets  throb- 
bing heavily  with  heat  that  grey  and  lowering  after- 
noon, the  shapes  of  things,  of  dull  things,  of  tramcars 
and  cabs  and  washerwomen,  the  shop  windows,  the 
behaviour  and  foreign  faces  of  dogs,  the  behaviour  of 
children,  the  Italian  eyes  all  turned  to  her,  all  staring 
at  her — they  fascinated  and  absorbed  her  like  the 
development  of  a  vivid  dream.  Who  were  these  people? 
What  would  they  all  do  next?  What  were  they  feeling, 
thinking,  saying?  Where  were  they  going,  what  had 
they  had  for  breakfast,  what  were  the  rooms  like  they 
had  just  come  out  of,  what  sorts  of  things  did  they  keep 
in  their  cupboards? 

"If  one  of  them  would  lend  me  a  cupboard,"  she 
exclaimed  to  Ingram,  "and  leave  me  alone  with  what 
it  has  got  inside  it,  I  believe  I'd  know  all  Italy  by  the 
time  I'd  done  with  it.  Everything,  everything — the 
desires  of  its  soul  and  its  body,  and  what  it  works  at 
and  plays  at  and  eats,  and  what  it  hopes  is  going  to 
happen  to  it  after  it  is  dead." 

And  he  had  been  supposing,  from  her  silence  as  she 
walked  beside  him,  that  she  was  finding  Milan  dull. 


428  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

Hastily  he  led  her  away  from  the  streets  into  an  English 
tea-room  and  made  her  sit  with  her  back  to  the  win- 
dow and  gave  her  rusks. 

But  though  her  childhood  had  been  spent  among 
these  objects,  which  were  esteemed  at  the  Palace  be- 
cause falling  just  short  at  the  last  moment  of  quite 
sweetness  and  quite  niceness  they  discouraged  sinful 
gorging,  they  had  none  of  their  ancient  sobering  effect 
on  her  there  in  Milan.  She  ate  them  and  ate  them, 
and  remained  as  brightly  detached  from  them  as  before. 
Their  dryness  choked  out  none  of  her  lively  interest, 
their  reminiscent  flavour  did  not  quiet  her,  not  even 
when  combined,  as  it  presently  was,  with  the  sound  of 
church  bells  floating  across  the  roofs.  She  might  have 
been  in  Redchester  with  those  Sunday  bells  ringing  and 
all  the  rusks.  Sitting  opposite  to  her  at  the  marble- 
topped  table  in  the  deserted  shop  Ingram  decided  he 
would  give  her  no  meals  more  amusing  than  this  in 
Milan.  So  long  as  she  kept  him  there  she  should, 
except  breakfast,  have  all  her  meals  in  that  one  place: 
modest  meals,  meals  damping  to  the  spirits  and  surely 
in  the  long  run  lowering,  the  most  inflaming  dish  pro- 
vided by  the  tea-room  being — it  announced  it  on  its 
wall — poached  eggs. 

He  kept  her  there  as  long  as  he  could,  long  after  the 
tea  was  cold,  and  tried,  so  deeply  upset  was  he  becom- 
ing by  the  delays  her  curious  immaturity  was  causing 
in  the  normal  development  of  running  away,  actually 
in  that  place  of  buns  to  make  love  to  her.  But  how 
difficult  it  was!  He,  too,  had  eaten  rusks.  He  wanted 
to  tell  her  he  adored  her,  and  it  reached  her  across  the 
teapot  in  the  form  of  comments  on  the  uncertainties 
of  her  behaviour.  He  wanted  to  tell  her  her  body  was 
as  delicate  as  flowers  and  delightful  as  dawn,  and  it  came 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  429 

out  a  criticism  of  the  quality — also  the  quantity — 
of  her  enthusiasms.  He  endeavoured  to  sing  the  praise 
of  the  inmost  core  of  her,  the  inexpressible,  illuminating, 
understanding,  and  wholly  sweet  core,  and  instead  he 
found  himself  acidly  deprecating  her  clothes. 

Ingeborg  sat  listening  with  half  an  ear  and  eyes 
bright  with  longing  to  be  out  in  the  streets  again.  She 
was  fidgeting  to  get  away  from  the  shop,  and  was  sorry 
he  should  choose  just  that  moment  to  smoke  so  great 
a  number  of  cigarettes.  Even  the  young  lady  who 
guarded  the  cakes  appeared  to  think  the  visit  for  one 
based  only  on  tea  and  rusks  had  lasted  long  enough, 
and  came  and  cleared  away  and  inquired  in  English,  it 
being  her  native  tongue,  whether  she  could  not,  now, 
get  them  anything  else. 

"The  curious  admixture  in  you,"  said  Ingrain,  start- 
ing out  with  the  intention  of  comparing  her  to  light  in 
the  darkness  and  immediately  getting  off  the  rails,  "the 
curious  admixture  in  you  of  streaks  of  childishness  and 
spasmodic  maturity!  You  are  at  one  moment  so 
entirely  impulsive  and  irresponsible,  and  a  moment 
before  you  were  quite  intelligent  and  reasonable,  and  a 
moment  afterwards  you  are  splendid  in  courage  and 
recklessness." 

"When  was  I  splendid  in  courage  and  recklessness?" 
she  asked,  bringing  more  attention  to  bear  on  him. 

"When  you  left  your  home  to  come  to  me.  The 
start  off  was  splendid.  Who  could  dream  it  would 
fizzle  out  into — well,  into  this?" 

"But  has  it  fizzled  out?  You're  not"  —she  leaned 
across  the  table  a  little  anxiously — "you're  not  scold- 
ing  me: 

"On  the  contrary,  I'm  trying  to  tell  you  all  you  are 
to  me." 


430  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"Oh,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"I  intend  somehow  to  isolate  my  consciousness  of 
your  streaks " 

"Streaks?" 

"As  bees  wax  up  a  dead  invader." 

"Oh — a  dead  invader?" 

"I  don't,  you  see,  believe  in  the  damning  effect  of 
one  specific  outbreak,  nor  of  one  or  two " 

'You're  not — you're  not  really  scolding  me?"  she 
asked,  again  a  little  anxiously. 

"On  the  contrary,  I'm  believing  in  and  clinging  to 
your  dear  innermost." 

"Oh,"  said  Ingeborg. 

"I  believe  these  streaks  and  patches  and  spots  your 
superficial  self  has  may  be  good  in  their  ultimate  effect, 
may  save  us,  by  interrupting,  from  those  too  serene 
spells  that  dogs'-ear  love  with  usage  and  carelessness." 

She  gazed  at  him,  her  mouth  a  little  open.  He  lit 
yet  another  cigarette. 

"But  it's  rather  like,"  he  said,  flinging  the  match 
away  into  a  corner  whither  the  young  lady  followed  it 
and  with  a  pursed  reproachfulness  trod  it  out,  "it's 
rather  like  finding  a  crock  of  gold  in  one's  garden  and 
only  being  able  to  peep  at  it  sometimes,  and  having 
to  go  away  and  work  very  hard  for  eleven  shillings  a 
week." 

She  went  on  gazing  at  him  in  silence. 

"And  not  even  for  eleven  shillings,"  said  Ingram, 
reflecting  on  all  he  had  already  endured.  'Work  very 
hard  for  nothing." 

She  leant  across  the  table  again.  "I  never  mean  to 
be  tiresome,"  she  said. 

"Little  star,"  he  said  stoutly. 

"It's    always    involuntary,    my    tiresomeness,"    she 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  431 

said,  addressing  him  earnestly.  "Oh,  but  it's  so  in- 
voluntary— and  the  dull  surfaces  I  know  I  have,  and 
the  scaly  imperfections " 

He  knocked  the  ashes  off  his  cigarette  with  unneces- 
sary vigour,  almost  as  though  they  were  bits  of  an  an- 
noying relative's  body. 

"I'm  warped,  and  encrusted,  and  blundering,"  went 
on  Ingeborg,  who  was  always  thorough  when  it  came 
to  adjectives. 

In  his  irritable  state,  to  have  her  abjectly  cheapening 
herself  vexed  him  as  much  as  everything  else  she  had 
done  that  day  had  vexed  him.  He  might,  under  prov- 
ocation, point  out  her  weaknesses,  but  she  must  not 
point  them  out  to  him.  He  wanted  to  worship  her, 
and  she  persisted  in  preventing  him.  Distressing  to 
have  a  god  who  refuses  to  sit  quiet  on  its  pedestal,  who 
insists  on  skipping  off  it  to  show  you  its  shortcomings 
and  beg  your  pardon.  How  could  he  make  love  to  her 
if  she  talked  like  this?  It  would  be  like  trying  to  make 
love  to  a  Prayer-book. 

"Is  it  because  it  is  Sunday,"  he  said,  "that  you  are 
impelled  to  acknowledge  and  confess  your  faults?  You 
make  me  feel  as  if  a  verger  had  passed  by  and  pushed 
me  into  a  pew." 

'Well,  but  I  am  warped  and  encrusted  and  blunder- 
ing," she  persisted. 

'You  are  not!"  he  said  irritably.  "Haven't  I  told 
you  you  are  my  star  and  my  miracle?" 

"Yes,  but " 

'I  tell  you,"  he  said,  determined  to  believe  it,  "that 
you  are  the  very  bath  of  my  tired  spirit." 

"How  kind  you  are!"  she  said.  "You're  as  kind 
to  me  as  if  you  were  my  brother.  Sometimes  I  think 
you  are  rather  like  my  brother.     I  never  had  a  brother, 


432  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

but  you're  very  like,  I  think,  the  one  I  would  have  had 
if  I  had  had  one."     She  warmed  to  the    idea.      "I 

feel  as  if  my  brother "  she  said,  preparing  to  launch 

into  enthusiasm;  but  he  interrupted  her  by  getting 
up. 

"It  seems  waste,"  he  said,  reaching  for  his  hat,  "to 
talk  about  your  brother,  as  you've  never  had  him. 
Shall  we  go?" 

She  jumped  up  at  once  with  the  air  of  one  released. 
He  himself  could  not  any  longer  endure  the  tea-room 
or  he  would  have  stayed  in  it.  Gloomily  he  went  out 
with  her  into  the  streets  again  and  noted  that  if  any- 
thing she  seemed  more  active  and  eager  than  before — 
thoroughly,  indeed,  rested  and  refreshed.  Gloomily 
he  realised  during  the  next  hour  or  two  that  she  had 
an  eye  for  buildings,  and  that  they  were  always  the 
wrong  ones.  Gloomily  he  discovered  an  odd  liking  in 
her  for  anything,  however  bad,  that  was  wrought  in 
iron.  He  could  not  get  her  past  some  of  the  iron  gates 
of  the  palaces.  He  hated  bad  gates.  Without  experi- 
ence she  could  not  compare  and  did  not  select,  and  her 
interest  was  all-embracing,  indiscriminating  as  a  child's. 
He  took  pains  to  avoid  the  Piazza  del  Duomo,  but  by 
some  accident  of  a  twisting  street  and  a  momentary 
inattentiveness  he  did  find  himself  at  last,  after  much 
walking  as  he  had  thought  away  from  it,  all  of  a  sudden 
facing  it.  Urging  her  on  by  her  elbow  he  hurried  her 
nervously  across  it,  hoping  she  would  not  see  the  Cathe- 
dral; but  the  Cathedral  being  difficult  not  to  see  she 
did  see  it,  and  remained,  as  he  had  feared  she  would, 
rooted. 

"Ingeborg,"  he  exclaimed,  "if  you  tell  me  you  like 
that " 

"Oh,  let  me  look,  let  me  look,"  she  cried,  holding  his 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  433 

sleeve  while  he  tried  to  get  her  away.  "It's  so  funny — 
it's  so  different " 

"Ingeborg "  he  almost  begged;  but  from  its  out- 
side to  its  inside  was  an  inevitable  step,  and  that  she 
should  gasp  on  first  getting  in  seemed  also,  after  she  had 
done  it,  inevitable. 

Ingram  found  himself  sight-seeing;  looking  at  win- 
dows; following  her  down  vaults;  towed  by  beadles. 
He  rubbed  his  hand  violently  over  his  hair. 

"But  this  is  intolerable!"  he  cried  aloud  to  himself . 
"I  shall  go  mad " 

And  he  strode  after  her  and  caught  her  arm  just  as 
she  was  disappearing  over  the  brim  of  the  crypt. 

"Ingeborg,"  he  said,  his  eyes  blazing  at  her  in  a  bright 
astonishment,  "do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  I  shall  not 
reach  you,  that  I'm  not  going  to  get  ever  at  you  till  I 
paint  you?" 

She  turned  in  the  gloom  and  looked  up  at  him. 

"Oh,  I  know  I'll  get  you  then,"  he  went  on  excitedly, 
while  the  interrupted  beadle  impatiently  rattled  his 
keys.  "Nothing  can  hide  you  away  from  me  then. 
I  don't  paint,  you  see,  by  myself " 

She  stared  up  at  him. 

"And  all  this  you're  doing,  all  this  waste  of  running 
about — have  you  then  forgotten  the  picl  ure? " 

It  was  as  though  he  had  shaken  her  suddenly  awake. 
She  stared  at  him  in  a  shock  of  recollection.  Why,  of 
course — the  picture.  Why — incredible,  but  she  had 
forgotten  it.  Actually  forgotten  it  in  the  wild  excite- 
ment of  travelling;  actually  she  had  been  wanting  to 
linger  at  each  new  place,  she  who  had  only  ten  days 
altogether,  she  who  had  come  only  after  all  because  of 
the  picture,  the  great  picture,  the  first  really  great  Ihing 
that  had  touched  her  life.     And  here  she  was  with  him. 


434  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

its  waiting  creator,  dragging  him  about  who  held  future 
beauty  in  his  cunning  guided  hand  among  all  the  mixed 
stuff  left  as  a  burden  on  the  generations  by  the  past, 
curious  about  the  stuff  with  an  uneducated  stupid 
curiosity,  wasting  time,  ridiculously  blocking  the  way 
to  something  great,  to  the  greatest  of  the  achievements 
of  a  great  artist. 

She  was  sobered.  She  was  overcome  by  the  vivid 
recognition  of  her  cheap  enthusiasm. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  staring  up  at  him,  wide  awake,  en- 
tirely ashamed,  "how  patient  you've  been  with  me!" 

And  as  he  still  held  her  by  the  arm,  his  eyes  blazing 
down  at  her  from  the  top  step  of  the  crypt,  she  could 
find  no  way  of  expressing  her  shame  and  contrition 
except  by  bending  her  head  and  laying  her  cheek  on 
his  hand. 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

THEY  stood  there  for  what  seemed  to  the  beadle 
at  the  bottom  an  intolerable  time,  the  lady, 
evidently  nobody  certificated,  with  her  cheek  on 
the  gentleman's  hand,  and  he  himself,  as  honest  a  man 
as  ever  wanted  to  get  his  tip  and  be  done  with  it,  kept 
waiting  with  nothing  to  do  but  curse  and  rattle  his  keys; 
and  though  it  was  summer  the  crypt  was  cold,  and  so 
would  his  feet  be  soon;  and  what  could  the  world  be 
coming  to  when  people  carried  their  caressings  even  into 
crypts?  Becoming  maddened  by  these  delays  the 
beadle  cursed  them  both,  their  present,  past,  and  future, 
roundly  and  thoroughly  and  also  profanely — for  by  the 
accident  of  his  calling  he  was  very  perfect  in  profanity — 
beneath  his  breath. 

"I'm  so  sorry,  so  sorry,"  Ingeborg  was  murmuring, 
who  did  nothing  byhalves,  neither  penitence,  nor  humil- 
ity, nor  gratitude. 

'My  worshipped  child,"  whispered  Ingram,  im- 
mensely moved  by  this  swift  change  in  her,  and  changed 
as  swiftly  himself  by  the  softness  of  her  cheek  against 
his  hand. 

"Oughtn't  we  to  go  to  Venice  to-night?"  she  asked, 
still  standing  in  that  oddly  touching  attitude  of  apology. 

"Not  to-night." 

"But  how  can  a  picture  get  painted  in  just  that  little 
time?" 

"Ah,  but  you  know  I'm  good  at  pictures." 

135 


436  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"But  I  can't  stay  a  minute  longer  than  Thursday. 
I  have  to  be  back  on  Saturday  at  the  very  latest." 

"You'll  see.     It  will  all  be  quite  easy." 

"But  to  think  that  I  forgot  the  picture!"  she  said, 
looking  up  at  him  shocked,  while  the  ancient  humility 
in  which  the  Bishop  had  so  carefully  trained  her  de- 
scended on  her  once  more,  only  four-fold  this  time,  like  a 
garment  grown  voluminous  since  last  it  was  put  on. 

They  had  for  some  reason  been  talking  in  murmurs, 
and  the  embittered  beadle,  losing  his  self-control,  began 
to  say  things  audibly.  Strong  in  the  knowledge  of  tour- 
ist ignorance  when  it  came  to  real  language  in  Italian, 
he  said  exactly  what  he  thought;  and  what  he  thought 
was  so  monstrous,  so  inappropriate  to  beadles  and  to  the 
atmosphere  of  a  crypt,  besides  being  so  extremely  and 
personally  rude,  that  it  roused  Ingram,  who  knew  Italian 
almost  better  than  the  beadle — for  his  included  scholarly 
by-ways  in  vituperation,  strange  and  curious  twists 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  uneducated — to  pour  a  sudden 
great  burning  blast  of  red-hot  contumely  down  on  to  his 
head;  and  having  done  this  he  turned,  and  holding 
Ingeborg's  hand  led  her  up  the  steps  again,  leaving  the 
beadle  at  the  bottom,  solitary,  shrivelled,  and  singed. 

They  thought  no  more  of  crypts  and  beadles.  They 
looked  neither  to  the  right  nor  to  the  left.  Ingram  held 
her  by  the  hand  all  the  way  down  the  Cathedral,  and 
the  piazza  when  they  came  out  on  to  it  with  its  crowds 
of  vociferating  men  and  bell-ringing  tramcars  and  sellers 
of  souvenirs  seemed  to  Ingeborg  nothing  now  but  a 
noisy  irrelevance.  Whole  strips  of  postcards  were  thrust 
unnoticed  into  her  face.  The  purpose  of  her  journey 
was  the  picture.  Marvellous  that  she  should  have  lost 
sight  of  it  and  of  the  wonder  and  pride  of  being  needed 
for  it — needed  at  last  for  anything,  she  who  so  pro- 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  437 

fouiidly  had  longed  to  be  needed,  but  needed  for  this, 
as  a  collaborator  actually,  even  though  passive  and  hum- 
ble, in  the  creation  of  something  splendid. 

He  put  her  into  a  cab  and  drove  with  her  away  from 
the  fuss  and  din.  She  was  exquisite  again  to  him, 
adorable  altogether.  The  memory  of  the  fret  and  hot 
irritation  of  the  day  was  wiped  out  as  though  it  had 
never  been  by  that  other  memory  of  her  sweet  apology 
on  the  steps  of  the  crypt.  He  told  the  driver,  for  it 
was  towards  evening,  to  take  them  to  those  gardens 
described  by  the  guide-book  as  probably  the  finest 
public  park  in  Italy;  and  presently,  as  they  walked 
together  in  the  remoter  parts,  the  dusk  dropped  down 
like  a  curtain  between  them  and  the  Sunday  night 
crowd  collecting  round  the  fountains.  Tall  trees,  and 
clumps  of  box,  and  rose-bushes  shut  out  everything 
except  mystery;  and  she  in  that  quiet  place  of  trickling 
water  and  dim  flowers  began  again  to  talk  to  him  as 
she  had  talked  at  Kokensee,  softly,  deliciously,  about 
nothing  except  himself.  It  was  like  the  shadow  of  a 
great  rock  in  a  thirsty  land;  it  was  infinite  refreshment 
and  relief. 

She  talked  about  the  picture,  with  reverence,  ador- 
ingly. She  told  him  how  in  the  rush  of  new  impressions 
she  had  been  forgetting  everything  that  really  mattered, 
not  only  that  greatest  of  them  all,  but  the  other  things 
she  had  to  thank  him  for  besides — Italy,  her  unexpected 
holiday,  due  so  entirely  to  him.  She  said,  her  husky 
voice  softer  than  ever  with  gratitude,  "You  have  been 
giving  me  happiness  and  happiness.  You've  heaped 
happiness  on  me  with  both  your  hands."  She  said, 
searching  only  for  words  that  should  be  sweet  enough, 
"Do  you  know  I  could  cry  to  think  of  it  all — of  all 
you've  been  to  me  since  you  came  to  Kokensee.     When 


438  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

I'm  back  there  again,  this  time  with  you  will  be  like  a 
hidden  precious  stone,  and  when  I'm  stupid  and  think- 
ing that  life  is  dull  I'll  get  it  out  and  look  at  it,  and  it  will 
flash  colour  and  light  at  me." 

"When  you  talk  like  that,"  said  Ingram,  greatly 
stirred,  "it  is  as  though  a  little  soul  had  come  back  into  a 
deserted  and  forgotten  body." 

"Is  it?"  she  murmured,  so  glad  that  she  could  please 
him,  perfectly  melted  into  the  one  desire  to  make 
up. 

'When  you  talk  like  that,"  he  said,  "life  becomes 
a  thing  so  happy  that  it  shines  golden  inside.  You 
have  the  soul  I  have  always  sought,  the  thing  that  comes 
through  me  like  light  through  a  stained-glass  window, 
so  that  I  am  lit,  so  that  my  heart  is  all  sweet  fire." 

"And  you,"  said  Ingeborg,  picking  up  his  image  as 
she  so  often  irritatingly  did,  only  now  it  did  not  irritate 
him,  and  flinging  it  back  with  a  fresh  adornment,  "the 
thought  of  you,  the  memory  of  you  when  I've  gone  back 
to  my  everyday  life,  will  be  like  a  perfect  rose-window 
in  a  grey  wall." 

"As  though  we  could  be  separated  again.  As  though 
being  in  love  with  somebody  miles  away  isn't  just  in- 
tolerable ache.  Oh,  my  dear,  why  do  you  look  at  me?  " 
he  asked  with  a  large  simplicity  of  manner  that  made 
her  ashamed  of  her  surprise;  "because  I  talk  of  being  in 
love?  Why  shouldn't  two  people  simply  love  each  other 
and  say  so?  And  if  I  love  you  it  isn't  with  the  greedy 
possessive  love  I've  had  for  women  before,  but  as  though 
the  feeling  one  has  for  the  light  on  crystals  or  for  clear 
shining  after  rain,  the  feeling  of  beauty  in  deep  and 
delicate  things,  has  become  personified  and  exalted." 

She  made  a  little  deprecating  gesture.  He  was  al- 
most too  kind  to  her;  too  kind.     But  nobody  could  rea- 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  439 

sonably  object  to  being  loved  like  crystals  and  clearness 
after  rain.     Robert  couldn't  possibly  mind  that. 

She  cast  about  for  things  to  say  back,  shining  things 
to  match  his,  but  he  found  them  all  first;  it  was  impos- 
sible to  keep  up  with  him. 

"You  are  delicate  and  fine,  like  translucent  gold," 
he  said.  "And  you  are  brave,  and  various,  and  alive. 
And  you  are  full  of  sweet  little  fancies,  little  swirls  of 
mood,  kind  eager  things.  Never  in  my  life  is  there  the 
remotest  chance  that  I  shall  meet  so  good  and  deep  a 
happiness  as  you  again,  and  I  put  my  heart  once  and 
for  all  between  your  dear  cool  little  hands." 

She  felt  bent  beneath  this  generosity,  she  who  had 
been  so  tiresome;  and  not  only  tiresome,  but  she  who 
had  had  doubts,  unworthy  ones  she  now  saw,  round 
about  breakfast  time,  for  instance,  piercing  through 
her  silly  delight  in  Italy,  as  to  whether  she  were  giving 
even  any  satisfaction. 

"I  perceive,"  he  went  on,  "I've  never  really  loved 
before.  I've  played  with  dolls,  and  expressed  myself 
to  dummies — like  a  boy  with  a  ball  he  must  play  with, 
and  failing  a  playfellow  he  bumps  it  against  a  wall  and 
catches  it  again.  But  you  play  back,  my  living  dear 
heart " 

More  and  more  was  she  invaded  by  a  happy  surprise. 
The  things  she  had  been  doing  without  knowing  it! 
All  the  right  ones,  apparently,  the  whole  time — playing 
back,  coming  up  to  his  expectations;  and  moments 
such  as  those  at  the  Borromean  Islands,  and  when  there 
were  picture  postcards,  and  just  recently  in  the  tea- 
room, had  not  in  the  least  been  what  she  supposed. 
She  had  not  understood.  She  glowed  to  think  she  had 
not  understood. 

"I've  been  so  wearied  and  distressed  with  life,"  he 


440  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

went  on,  talking  in  a  low,  moved  voice.  "  It  has  seemed 
at  last  such  an  old  hairy  thing  of  jealousies  and  shame 
and  disillusionments,  and  work  falling  short  of  its  best, 
and  endless  coming  and  going  of  people,  and  me  for  ever 
left  with  a  blunted  edge.  And  now  you  come,  you,  and 
are  like  a  great  sweet  wind  blowing  across  it,  and  like 
clear  skies,  and  a  moon  rising  before  sunset.  It  is  as 
though  you  had  taken  up  a  brush  and  painted  out  the 
old  ugly  tangles  and  made  a  new  picture  of  me  in  lu- 
minous, clear  watercolour." 

Her  surprise  grew  and  grew,  and  her  gladness  that 
she  had  been  mistaken. 

"Those  streaks,"  she  thought.  "He  didn't  really 
mean  what  he  said  about  those  streaks " 

"Somehow,  though  quite  intelligent  all  along,"  con- 
tinued Ingram,  "I've  been  shallow  and  hard  in  my  feel- 
ings about  everything.  Now  I  feel  love  like  a  deep  soft 
river  flowing  through  my  heart.  I  love  every  one  be- 
cause I  love  you.  I  can  set  out  to  make  people  happy, 
I  can  do  and  say  fine  and  generous  things  because  of 
the  love  of  you  shining  in  my  heart " 

"That  beadle,"  she  thought,  "he  didn't  really  mean 
what  he  said  to  that  beadle " 

'You're  what  I've  been  looking  for  in  women  all  my 
life,"  he  went  on.  "  You're  the  dream  come  true.  I've 
only  tried  to  love  before.  And  now  you've  come,  and 
made  me  love,  which  we  all  dream  of  doing,  and  given 
me  love,  which  we  all  dream  of  getting " 

Her  pleasure  became  tinged  with  a  faint  uneasiness, 
for  she  wouldn't  have  thought,  left  to  herself,  that  she 
had  been  giving  him  love.  Pastors'  wives  didn't  give 
love  except  to  their  pastors.  Friendship,  yes;  she  had 
given  him  warm  friendship,  and  an  abject  admiration 
of  his  gifts,  and  pride,  and  gratefulness — oh,  such  pride 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  441 

and  gratefulness — that  he  should  like  being  with  her 
and  saying  lovely  things  to  her;  but  love?  She  had 
supposed  love  was  reserved  for  lovers.  Well,  if  he 
liked  to  call  it  love  .  .  .  one  must  not  be  miss- 
ish  ...  it  was  very  kind  of  him.  ...  It  was, 
also,  more  and  more  wonderful  to  her  that  she  had  been 
doing  and  being  and  giving  all  these  things  without 
knowing  it.  Her  suddenly  discovered  accomplishments 
staggered  her.  "Is  ilf  possible,"  she  thought  with 
amazement,  "that  I'm  clever?" 

And  as  if  he  had  heard  the  word  lovers  in  her  mind 
he  said  it. 

"Other  lovers,"  he  said,  "are  engaged  perpetually 
in  sycophantic  adaptations " 

"In  what?" 

She  thought  he  had  been  going  to  say  engaged  to 
be  married,  for  though  she  had  known  even  at  Red- 
chester,  in  spite  of  the  care  taken  to  shut  such  knowl- 
edge out,  that  the  world  included  wicked  persons  who 
loved  without  engagements  or  marriages,  sometimes 
indeed  even  without  having  been  properly  introduced, 
persons  who  were  afterwards  punished  by  the  correctly 
plighted  by  not  being  asked  to  tea,  they  were,  the  Bishop 
informed  an  anxious  inquirer  once  when  he  had  sup- 
posed her  out  of  the  room,  in  God's  infinite  mercy  nu- 
merically negligible. 

But  Ingram  did  not  heed  her.  "Except  us,"  he  went 
on. 

"Us?"  she  echoed.  Well,  if  one  took  the  word  in  its 
widest  sense. 

"We  fit,"  he  said.  "We  fit,  and  reflect  each  other. 
I  in  your  heart,  you  in  my  heart,  like  two  mirrors  that 
hang  opposite  one  another  for  ever." 

A  doubt  as  to  the  expediency  of  so  much  talk  of  hearts 


442  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

and  love  crept  into  her  mind,  but  she  quieted  it  by  re- 
membering how  much  worse  the  Song  of  Solomon  was 
— "And  yet  so  respectable  really,"  she  said,  continuing 
her  thought  aloud,  "and  all  only  about  the  Church." 

"What  is  so  respectable?  Come  and  sit  on  that  seat 
by  the  bush  covered  with  roses,"  he  said.  "Look — in 
this  faint  light  they  are  as  white  and  delicate  as  you." 

"The  Song  of  Solomon.  It — just  happened  to  come 
into  my  head.  Things  do,"  she  added,  beginning  to 
lay  hold  of  the  first  words  that  occurred  to  her,  no  longer 
at  her  ease. 

She  sat  down  on  the  edge  of  the  seat  where  he  put  her. 

"It's  stone,"  she  said  nervously,  looking  up  at  him, 
for  he  had  taken  a  step  back  and  was  considering 
her,  his  head  on  one  side.  "Do  you  think  it's  good 
for  us?" 

"You  beautiful  little  thing,"  he  murmured,  consider- 
ing her.     "You  exquisite  little  lover." 

Her  hands  gripped  the  edge  of  the  seat  more  tightly. 
A  sudden  very  definite  longing  for  Robert  seized  her. 

"Oh,  but "  she  began,  and  faltered. 

She  tried  again.  "It's  so  kind  of  you,  but — you 
know — but  I  don't  think " 

"What  don't  you  think,  my  dear,  my  discoverer,  my 
creator,  my  restorer " 

"Oh,  I  know  there  was  Solomon,"  she  faltered,  hold- 
ing on  to  the  seat,  "saying  things,  too,  and  they  meant 
something  else,  but — but  isn't  this  different?  Different 
because — well,  I  suppose  through  my  not  being  the 
Church?  I'm  very  sorryT  she  added  apologetically, 
"that  I'm  not  the  Church — because  then  I  suppose 
nothing  would  really  matter?" 

"You  mean  you  don't  want  me  to  call  you  lover?" 

"Well,  I  am  married,"  she  said,  in  the  voice  of  one 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  443 

who  apologised  for  drawing  his  attention  to  it.  "There 
is  no  getting  away  from  that." 

"But  we  have  got  away  from  it,"  said  Ingram,  sitting 
down  beside  her  and  loosening  the  hand  nearest  him 
from  its  tight  hold  on  the  seat  and  kissing  it,  while  she 
watched  him  in  an  uneasiness  and  dismay  that  now 
were  extreme.  "That's  exactly  what  we  have  done. 
Oh,"  he  went  on,  kissing  her  hand  with  what  seemed  to 
her  a  quite  extraordinary  emotion,  "you  brave,  beau- 
tiful little  thing,  you  must  know — you  can't  not  know — 
how  completely  and  gloriously  you  have  burned  your 
ships!" 

"Ships?"  she  echoed. 

She  stared  at  him  a  moment,  then  added  with  a  catch 
in  her  breath: 

"Which— ships?" 

"Ingeborg,  Ingeborg,  my  fastness,  my  safety,  my 
darling,  my  reality,  my  courage—  -"  said  Ingrain,  kiss- 
ing her  hand  between  each  word. 

'Yes,"  she  said,  brushing  that  aside,  "but  which 
ships?" 

"My  strength,  my  helper,  friend,  sister,  lover,  unmer- 
ited mate " 

'Yes,  but  won't  you  leave  off  a  minute?  It — it 
would  be  convenient  if  you'd  leave  off  a  minute  and  tell 
me  which  ships?" 

He  did  leave  off,  to  look  into  her  eyes  in  the  dusk, 
eyes  fixed  on  him  in  a  concentration  of  questioning  that 
left  his  epithets  on  one  side  as  so  much  irrelevant  lum- 
ber. 

"Little  worshipful  thing,"  he  said,  still  gripping  her 
hand,  "did  you  really  think  you  could  go  back?  Did 
you  really  think  you  could?" 

"Go  back  where?" 


444  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

'To  that  unworthy  rubbish  heap,  Kbkensee?" 

She  stared  at  him.  Their  faces,  close  together,  were 
white  in  the  dusk,  and  their  eyes  looking  into  each  other's 
were  like  glowing  dark  patches. 

"Why  should  I  not  think  so?"  she  said. 

"Because,  you  little  artist  in  recklessness,  you've 
burned  your  ships." 

She  made  an  impatient  movement,  and  he  tightened 
his  hold  on  her  hand. 

"Please,"  she  said,  "do  you  mind  telling  me  about 
the  ships?" 

"One  of  them  was  this." 

"Was  what?" 

"  Coming  to  Italy  with  me." 

"You  said  heaps  of  people " 

"Oh,  yes,  I  know — a  man  has  to  say  things.  And 
the  other  was  writing  that  letter  to  Robert.  If  you'd 
left  it  at  boots  and  Berlin!" 

He  laughed  triumphantly  and  kissed  her  hand  again. 

"But  that  wouldn't  have  helped,  either,  really,"  he 
went  on,  "because  directly  the  ten  days  were  up  and 
you  hadn't  come  back  he'd  have  known " 

"Hadn't  come  back?" 

"Oh,  Ingeborg — little  love,  little  Parsifal  among 
women,  dear  divine  ignorance  and  obtuseness  —  I 
adore  you  for  believing  the  picture  could  be  done  in  a 
week!" 

"But  you  said " 

"Oh,  yes,  yes,  I  know — a  man  has  to  say  things  at  the 
beginning ' ' 

"What  beginning?  " 

"Of  this — of  love,  happiness,  all  the  wonders  of  joy 
we're  going  to  have " 

"Please,  do  you  mind  not  talking  about  those  other 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  445 

things  for  a  minute?  Why  do  you  tell  me  I  can't  go 
back,  I  can't  go  home?  " 

"They  wouldn't  have  you.  Isn't  it  ridiculous — 
isn't  it  glorious?" 

"What,  not  have  me  home?  They  wouldn't  have  me? 
Who  wouldn't?  There  isn't  a  they.  I've  only  got 
Robert — — " 

"  He  wouldn't.  After  that  letter  he  couldn't.  And  Ko- 
kensee  wouldn't  and  couldn't.  And  Glambeck  wouldn't 
and  couldn't.  And  Germany,  if  you  like,  wouldn't  and 
couldn't.  The  whole  world  gives  you  to  me.  You're  my 
mate  now  for  ever." 

She  watched  him  kissing  her  hand  as  though  it  did 
not  belong  to  her.  She  was  adjusting  a  new  thought 
that  was  pushing  its  way  like  a  frozen  spear  into  her 
mind,  trying  to  let  it  in,  seeing,  she  could  not  keep  it 
out,  among  all  those  happy  thoughts  so  warmly  there 
already  about  Ingram  and  her  holiday  and  the  kindness 
and  beauty  of  life,  without  its  too  cruelly  killing  too 

many  of  them  too  quickly.      'Do  you  mean "  she 

began;  then  she  stopped,  because  what  was  the  use  of 
asking  him  what  he  meant?     Quite  suddenly  she  knew. 

An  immense  slow  coldness,  an  icy  fog,  seemed  to 
settle  down  on  her  and  blot  out  happiness.  All  the 
dear  accustomed  things  of  life,  the  small  warm  things 
of  quietness  and  security,  the  everyday  things  one  nes- 
tled up  to  and  knew,  were  sliding  away  from  her.  "So 
that,"  she  heard  herself  saying  in  a  funny  clear  voice, 
"there's  only  God?" 

"How,  only  God?"  he  asked,  looking  up  at  her. 

"Only  God  left  who  wouldn't  call  it  adultery?" 

The  word  in  her  mouth  shocked  him. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 

SHE  sat  quite  still  after  that  while  he  talked. 
After  that  one  deplorable  bald  word  she  said 
no  more  at  all;  and  Ingram's  passionate  expla- 
nations and  asseverations  only  every  now  and  then 
caught  her  ear.  She  was  going  home.  That  was  all 
she  knew  and  could  think  of.  Back  to  Robert.  Away 
from  Ingram.  Somehow.  At  once.  Robert  would  turn 
her  out — Ingram  was  saying  so,  she  heard  that. 
Robert  might  kill  her — Ingram  was  saying  so,  she  heard 
that,  too;  he  didn't  say  kill,  he  called  it  ill-using,  but 
whatever  it  was  who  cared?  She  would  at  least,  she 
thought  with  a  new  grimness,  be  killed  legitimately. 
She  was  going  back  to  Robert,  going  to  tell  him  she  was 
sorry.  Anyhow  that.  Then  he  could  do  what  he  chose. 
But  how  to  get  to  him?  Oh,  how  to  get  to  him?  Her 
thoughts  whirled.  Ingram  wouldn't  let  her  go,  but 
she  was  going.  Ingram  had  her  money,  but  she  was 
going.  That  very  night.  Her  thoughts,  whirling  and 
whizzing,  went  breathless  here  in  dark,  terrifying  places. 
And  while  she  was  flying  along  on  them  like  a  leaf  on  a 
hurricane  blast,  Ingram  was  still  kissing  her  hand,  still 
pouring  out  phrases  as  he  had  been  doing  ever  since — 
surely  ever  since  Time  began?  She  stared  at  him,  re- 
membering him  in  a  kind  of  wonder.  She  caught  a 
word  here  and  there:  pellucid,  he  was  saying  something 
was,  translucent.  She  felt  no  resentment.  She  had 
deserved  all  she  had  got.     Not  Ingram  and  what  he  had 

446 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  447 

told  her  or  not  told  her  mattered,  but  Robert.  How  to 
reach  Robert,  how  to  get  near  enough  to  him  to  say, 
"See — I've  come  back.  Draggled  and  muddied.  Every- 
body believes  it.  You'll  believe  it,  though  I  tell  you 
it's  not  true.  And  if  you  believe  it  or  not  it's  your  ruin. 
You'll  have  to  leave  this  place,  and  all  your  work  and 
hopes.     Now  kill  me." 

"A  man,"  she  heard  Ingram  going  on,  still  passion- 
ately explaining  what  was  so  completely  plain,  "must 
pretend  things  at  the  beginning  to  get  his  dear  wo- 
man  " 

"Of  course,  of  course,"  nodded  her  thoughts  in  hur- 
ried agreement,  rushing  past  him  to  the  swift  turning 
over  of  ways  of  reaching  Robert — who  cared  about  dear 
women? — how  to  hide  from  Ingram  that  she  was  going, 
how  to  keep  him  from  suspecting  her,  from  watching 
her  every  instant. 

A  vision  of  herself  in  the  restaurant  car  handing 
him  over  the  money  she  had,  chaining  herself  of  her 
own  accord  to  him,  rose  for  a  moment — danced  mock- 
ingly, it  was  so  ludicrously  important  an  action  and  at 
the  same  time  so  small  and  natural — before  her  eyes. 
The  chances  of  life!  The  way  small  simplicities  worked 
out  great  devastations.  She  threw  back  her  head  in  a 
brief,  astonished  laugh. 

Instantly  Ingrain  kissed  her  throat. 

"I — I '  she  gasped,  getting  up  quickly. 

"It — has  been  so  hot  all  day,"  she  said  with  a  little 
look  of  apologising,  remembering  to  gather  her  terror 
and  misery  tightly  round  her  like  a  cloak,  so  that  it 
should  not  touch  him,  so  that  he  should  not  by  so  much 
as  a  flutter  of  it  feel  that  it  was  there;  for  then  he  would 
watch  her,  and  she — she  gripped  her  hands  together— 
would  be  lost,  lost. 


448  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

"I  think  I'm — tired,"  she  said. 

He  became  immediately  all  reasonableness,  the  kindly 
reasonableness  of  one  who  has  cleared  away  much  con- 
fusion and  can  now  afford  to  wait. 

He  got  up,  too,  agreeing  about  the  heat  of  the  day,  and 
reminding  her  also  of  its  length,  of  the  journeys  by  land 
and  water  it  had  contained,  and  of  the  inadequate  meal 
of  rusks  that  had  been  their  sole  support  for  nearly  six 
hours.  No  wonder  she  was  tired.  He  was  tenderness 
and  concern  itself.  "Poor  little  dear  thing,"  he  whis- 
pered, drawing  her  hand  through  his  arm  and  holding 
it  there  clasped  in  his  other  hand  as  he  led  her  away 
towards  the  entrance  and  went  with  her  out  into  the 
streets  again,  making  her  walk  slowly  lest  she  should 
be  more  tired,  restraining  her  when  she  tried  to  hurry; 
and  seeing  a  cheerful  restaurant  with  crowded  tables  on 
the  pavement  in  front  of  it,  he  suggested  they  should 
stop  at  it  and  have  supper. 

But  Ingeborg  said  in  a  low  voice,  kept  carefully  con- 
trolled, that  she  was  afraid  she  would  go  to  sleep  over 
supper  she  was  so  tired;  might  she  have  some  milk  at 
the  hotel  and  go  to  bed? 

His  tenderness  for  her  as  he  conceded  the  milk  was 
nurse-like. 

But  he,  she  murmured,  he  must  have  supper — would 
he  not  send  her  back  in  a  cab  and  stay  here  and  have 
some? 

No,  he  would  certainly  not  trust  a  thing  so  precious 
to  some  careless  cabman;  he  would  take  her  back  to 
the  hotel,  and  then  perhaps  have  food. 

But  the  hotel,  she  murmured,  was  so  stuffy — did  he 
think  he  would  like  food  there? 

Well,  perhaps  when  she  was  safely  in  it  he  would 
come  out  again  to  one  of  these  pavement  places. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  449 

She  seemed  more  pliantly  feminine  as  she  went  with 
quiet  steps  through  the  streets  on  his  arm  than  he  had 
yet  known  her.  It  was  as  though  she  had  wonderfully 
been  converted  from  boyhood  to  womanhood,  smitten 
suddenly  with  womanhood  there  in  those  gardens,  and 
every  muscle  of  her  mind  and  will  had  relaxed  into  a 
sweet  fatigue  of  abandonment.  He  adored  her  like 
that,  so  gentle,  giving  no  trouble,  accepting  the  situa- 
tion and  his  comfortings  and  his  pattings  of  the  hand 
on  his  arm  and  all  his  further  explanations  and  assevera- 
tions with  a  grown-up  dear  reasonableness  he  had  not 
vet  seen  in  her.  In  return  he  took  infinite  care  of  her, 
protective  and  possessive,  whenever  they  came  to  a 
crowd  or  a  puddle.  And  he  stroked  her  hand,  and 
looked  into  her  face,  demanding  and  receiving  an  answer- 
ing obedient  smile.  And  he  wanted  her  and  asked  her 
to  lean  heavily  on  his  arm  so  that  she  should  not  be  so 
tired.     In  a  word,  he  was  fond. 

They  were  staying  at  an  hotel  near  the  station,  just 
off  the  station  square  down  a  side  street,  a  place  fre- 
quented by  middle-class  Italians  and  commercial  travel- 
lers, noisy  with  passing  tramcars,  and  of  little  promise 
in  the  matter  of  food.  Ingram  had  taken  rooms  there 
that  afternoon  when  the  determination  was  strong  upon 
him  that  Ingeborg,  in  Milan,  should  not  be  comfortable. 
Now  he  was  sorry;  for  the  happy  turn  things  had  taken, 
the  immense  stride  he  had  made  in  the  direction  of 
Venice  by  opening  her  eyes  to  the  facts  of  the  situation, 
made  this  excess  of  martyrdom  unnecessary.  But  there 
they  were,  the  rooms,  engaged  and  unpacked  in,  on  the 
first  floor  almost  on  a  level  with  the  ceaseless  passing 
tops  of  the  bumping  tramcars,  and  it  was  too  late  that 
night  to  change. 

He  felt,  however,  very  apologetic  now  as  he  went 


450  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

with  her  up  the  dingy  stairs  to  the  door  of  her  room 
in  case  some  too  cheery  commercial  traveller  should 
meet  her  on  the  way  and  dare  to  look  at  her. 

"It's  an  unworthy  place  for  my  little  shining  mate," 
he  said,  "but  Venice  will  make  up  for  it  all.  You'll 
love  my  rooms  there — the  spaciousness  of  them,  and 
the  sunset  on  the  lagoons  from  the  windows.  To-mor- 
row we'll  go " 

He  searched  her  face  as  she  stood  in  the  crude  top 
light  of  the  corridor.  Naturally  she  was  tired  after 
such  a  day,  but  he  observed  a  further  dimness  about 
her,  a  kind  of  opaqueness,  like  that  of  a  lamp  whose 
light  has  been  put  out,  and  it  afflicted  him.  The  light 
would  be  lit  again,  he  knew,  and  burn  more  brightly 
than  ever,  but  it  afflicted  him  that  even  for  a  moment 
it  should  go  out;  and  swiftly  glancing  up  and  down 
the  passage  he  took  both  her  hands  in  his  and  kissed 
them. 

"Little  dear  one,"  he  said,  "little  sister — you  do  for- 
give me?" 

"Oh,  but  of  course,  of  course,"  said  Ingeborg  quickly, 
with  all  her  heart;  and  she  felt  for  a  moment  the  acute 
desolation  of  life,  the  inevitable  hurtings,  the  eternal 
impossibility,  whatever  steps  one  took,  of  not  treading 
to  death  something  that,  too,  was  living  and  beautiful 
■ — this  thing  or  that  thing,  one  or  the  other. 

Her  eyes  as  she  looked  at  him  were  suddenly  veiled 
with  tears.  Her  thoughts  stopped  swirling  round  ways 
of  escape.  And  very  vivid  was  the  perception  that 
her  escape,  if  she  did  succeed  in  it,  was  going  to  be  from 
something  she  would  never  find  again,  from  a  light  and 
a  warmth,  however  fitful,  and  a  greatness.  ...  If 
he  had  been  her  brother  she  would  have  put  her  arms 
round  him  and  kissed  him.     If  she  had  been  his  mother 


THE  PASTORS  WIFE  451 

she  would  have  solemnly  blessed  him.  As  it  was  there 
was  nothing  to  be  done  but  the  bleak  banality  of  turning 
away  into  her  room  and  shutting  the  door. 

She  heard  his  footsteps  going  down  the  passage.  She 
went  to  the  window,  and  saw  him  going  down  the  street. 
There  was  not  an  instant  to  lose — she  must  find  out  a 
train  now,  while  he  was  away,  have  that  at  least  ready 
in  her  mind  for  the  moment  when  she  somehow  had 
got  the  money.  First  that;  then  think  out  how  to  get 
the  money. 

She  stole  into  the  passage  again — stole,  for  she  felt  a 
breathless  fear  that  in  spite  of  his  being  so  manifestly 
gone  he  yet  would  hear  her  somehow  if  she  made  a  noise 
and  come  back — stole  along  it  and  down  the  stairs  into 
the  entrance  hall  where  hung  enormously  a  giant  time- 
tabie,  conspicuous  and  convenient  in  an  hotel  that  sup- 
plied no  concierge  to  answer  questions,  and  whose 
clientele  was  particularly  restless. 

Nobody  was  in  the  hall.  It  was  not  an  hour  of  arrival 
or  departure;  and  the  man  in  the  green  apron  she  had 
seen  there  before,  who  at  odd  moments  became  that 
which  in  better  hotels  is  uninterruptedly  a  concierge, 
was  nowhere  to  be  seen,  either.  She  had  to  get  on  a 
chair,  the  trains  to  Berlin  were  so  high  up  on  the  great 
sheet,  and  tremblingly  she  kept  an  eye  on  the  street 
door,  through  whose  glass  panels  she  could  see  people 
passing  up  and  down  the  street,  and  they  in  llieir  turn 
could  and  did  see  her.  Yes — there  was  a  night  train 
at  1.30.  It  came  from  Rome.  Travellers  might  arrive 
by  it.  The  hotel  door  would  be  open.  Her  thoughts 
flew.  It  got  to  Berlin  at  six  something  of  the  morning 
after  the  next  morning.     .     .     . 

Suddenly  the  glass  door  opened,  and  she  jumped  so 
violently  that  she  nearly  fell  off  her  chair,  and  she  fled 


452  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

upstairs,  panic-stricken,  without  even  looking  to  see  if 
it  were  Ingram. 

Safe  in  her  room  she  was  horrified  at  herself  for  such 
a  panic.  How  was  she  going  to  do  everything  there 
was  to  be  done  if  she  were  like  that?  She  stood  in  the 
middle  of  the  floor  twisting  her  hands.  If  in  her  life 
she  had  needed  complete  self-control  and  clear  think- 
ing and  calm  acting  she  knew  it  was  now.  But  how  to 
keep  calm  and  clear  when  her  body  was  shaking  with 
fear?  She  felt,  standing  there  struggling  with  herself, 
so  entirely  forlorn,  so  entirely  cut  off  from  warmth  and 
love,  so  horribly  with  nothing  she  could  look  back  to 
and  believe  in  and  nothing  she  could  look  forward  to 
and  hope  in,  that  just  to  speak  to  somebody,  just  to 
speak  to  a  stranger  who  because  he  was  a  stranger 
would  have  no  prejudices  against  her,  would  simply  rec- 
ognise a  familiar  distress — for  surely  the  other  human 
beings  in  the  hotel  must  all  at  some  time  have  been 
unhappy? — seemed  a  thing  of  comfort  beyond  express- 
ing. Her  longing  was  intolerable  to  get  close  for  a 
moment  to  another  human  soul,  to  ask  of  it  how  it  had 
fared  when  it,  too,  went  down  into  the  sea  without  ships, 
leaving  its  ships  all  burned  behind  it,  and  yet  its  business 
had  inexorably  been  in  deep  waters.  "Oh,  haven't  you 
been  unhappy,  too?"  she  wanted  to  ask  of  it  "haven't 
you  sometimes  been  very  unhappy?  Dear  fellow-soul 
— please — tell  me — haven't  you  sometimes  felt  bitter 
cold?" 

But  there  was  no  one;  there  was  no  brotherhood  in 
the  world,  except  at  the  rare  obvious  moments  of  com- 
mon catastrophes  and  deaths. 

She  began  to  walk  up  and  down  the  room.  Half- 
past  one  that  night  was  the  hour  of  her  escape,  and 
somehow   between   now   and   then   she   must  get   the 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  453 

money.  Perhaps  by  some  chance  he  had  left  it  in  his 
room?  Forgotten  in  a  moment  of  carelessness  in  the 
pocket  of  the  coat  he  had  changed  when  they  arrived 
that  afternoon?  It  was  not  likely,  for  he  was,  she  had 
noticed,  of  an  extreme  neatness  and  care  about  all  such 
things.  He  never  forgot.  He  never  mislaid.  Still 
— there  was  the  chance. 

She  opened  the  door  again,  this  time  in  deadly  fear, 
for  perhaps  he  would  be  coming  back,  not  choosing 
after  all  to  stay  out  there  having  supper. 

There  was  no  one  in  the  passage.  His  room,  she 
knew,  was  farther  down;  she  had  seen  him  going  into 
it,  four  doors  down  on  the  same  side  as  hers.  She  went 
out  and  stood  a  moment  listening,  then  began  to  walk 
along  towards  it  with  an  air  of  unconcern  as  though 
rightfully  going  down  the  corridor  till  she  came  to 
his  door;  then  with  her  heart  in  her  mouth  she  bolted 
in. 

The  lights  from  the  street  and  the  houses  opposite 
shone  in  through  the  unshuttered  window,  and  she 
could  see  into  every  corner  of  the  shabby  hotel  bed- 
room, a  reproduction  of  the  one  she  was  in  herself, 
trailed  over  dingily  by  traces  of  hundreds  of  commercial 
travellers  and  smelling  memorially,  as  hers  did,  too,  of 
their  smoke  and  their  pomades.  She  was  hot  and  cold 
with  fear;  guilty  as  a  thief.  His  coat  hung  behind  the 
door.  She  ran  her  trembling  fingers  over  it.  Not  a 
thing  in  any  of  his  pockets.  Nowhere  anything  that 
she  could  see.  His  unpacking  had  been  done  with 
orderliness  itself.  Of  course  he  would  not  forget  his 
pocket-book.  With  a  gasp  that  was  almost  relief  she 
slipped  out  of  the  room,  shut  the  door  quickly  behind 
her,  and  assuming  what  she  tried  to  hope  was  an  un- 
concerned swagger,  a  sort  of  "I  ni-as-good-as-you-are" 


454  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

air  for  the  impressing  of  any  one  she  might  meet,  walked 
down  the  passage  again. 

Just  as  she  reached  her  door  Ingram  appeared,  hurry- 
ing up  the  stairs  two  steps  at  a  time. 

She  clutched  hold  of  the  handle  of  her  door,  suddenly 
unable  to  stand. 

"I — I "  she  began. 

But  he  did  not  seem  surprised  to  see  her  there;  he 
was  intent  on  something  else. 

"Just  think,"  he  said,  coming  quickly  towards  her. 
"I  left  my  pocket-book  in  my  room,  full  of  notes.  The 
whole  afternoon  lying  in  the  drawer  of  the  table.  I 
wonder " 

He  hurried  past  her  almost  at  a  run. 

She  got  into  her  room  somehow,  feeling  Heaven  had 
forsaken  her. 

After  a  minute  or  two  she  heard  him  coming  along 
again.     He  stopped  at  her  door  and  called  to  her  softly : 

"It's  all  right.     It  was  still  there.     Wasn't  it  lucky? " 

"Very,"  said  Ingeborg;  but  so  faintly  that  he  did 
not  hear. 

"Good  night,  my  Little  One,"  she  heard  him  say. 
"Now  I'm  going  out  to  get  that  supper." 

"Good  night,"  said  Ingeborg,  again  so  faintly  that 
he  heard  nothing;  and  after  a  pause  of  listening  he  went 
away. 

She  tumbled  down  on  to  the  bed.  She  felt  sick.  It 
was  a  quarter  past  ten.  She  had  three  hours  to  wait. 
She  knew  what  she  was  going  to  do,  try  to  do.  At  one 
o'clock  she  would  take  off  her  shoes  and  go  down  the 
passage  and  see  if  his  door  were  locked.  He  would  be 
asleep.  He  must,  oh,  he  must  be  asleep — she  twisted 
about  in  the  terror  that  smote  her  at  the  thought  that 
he  might  perhaps  not  be  asleep.     .     .     . 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  455 

"God  does  love  me,"  she  said  to  herself,  "I  am  His 
child.  Haven't  I  sinned  and  repented?  Haven't  I 
done  all  the  things?  He's  bound  to  help  me,  to  save 
me.     It  is  the  wicked  He  saves — I  am  wicked " 

Her  heart  stood  still  at  the  fearful  thought  that 
perhaps  she  had  not  yet  been  after  all  wicked  enough, 
not  wicked  enough  to  be  saved. 

People  belonging  to  the  other  rooms  began  to  come 
back  to  bed.  Somebody  in  the  next  room  sang  while 
he  was  undressing,  a  gay  Italian  song,  and  presently  he 
smoked,  and  the  smoke  came  in  under  the  door  between 
her  room  and  his. 

She  lay  in  the  dark,  or  rather  in  the  lights  and  shad- 
ows of  the  uncurtained  room,  and  every  two  or  three 
minutes  a  tramcar  passed  and  shut  out  other  sounds. 
Igram  must  have  come  in  long  ago.  When  it  was  mid- 
night she  got  up  and  arranged  her  shoes  and  hat  just 
inside  the  door  so  that  she  could  seize  them  as  she 
came  back,  supposing  she  had  been  successful,  and 
rush  on  straight  downstairs  and  out  and  to  the 
station.  All  other  thoughts  were  now  lost  in  the  in- 
tentness  with  which  she  was  concentrated  on  what 
she  had  to  do  exactly  next.  She  would  not  let  herself 
look  aside  at  the  abyss  yawning  if  she  were  not  suc- 
cessful. She  gripped  hold  of  the  thing  she  had  to  do, 
the  getting  of  the  money,  and  fixed  her  whole  self  on 
that  alone. 

She  lay  down  on  the  bed  again,  her  hands  clenched 
as  though  in  them  she  held  her  determination.  Once 
her  thoughts  did  slip  off  to  Robert,  to  the  extreme 
desolation  of  what  was  waiting  for  her  there,  and  tears 
came  through  her  tightly  shut  eyelids. 

:'It's  what  you've  deserved,"  she  whispered,  strug- 
gling to  stop  them.     "Yes,  but  he  hasn't  deserved  it — 


456  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

Robert  hasn't  deserved  it — you've  ruined  him "  she 

was  forced  to  go  on. 

She  shook  off  the  unnerving  thoughts.  By  her  watch 
it  was  a  quarter  to  one. 

She  stood  up  and  began  to  listen. 

The  tramcars  passed  now  only  every  ten  minutes. 
In  between  their  passing  the  hotel  was  quiet.  She 
would  wait  for  the  approach  of  the  next  one — in  the 
stillness  she  could  hear  it  coming  a  long  way  off — then 
she  would  run  down  the  passage  in  her  stockinged 
feet  to  Ingram's  door  and  open  it  just  as  the  noise  was 
loudest. 

An  icy  hand  seemed  holding  her  heart,  so  icy  that 
it  burned.  She  had  not  known  she  had  so  many  pulses 
in  her  body.  They  shook  her  and  shook  her;  great, 
heavy,  hammering  things.  She  crept  to  her  door  and 
opened  it  a  chink.  There  was  a  dim  light  in  the  pas- 
sage. She  heard  the  distant  rumbling  of  a  tramcar. 
Now — she  must  run. 

But  she  could  not.  She  stood  and  shook.  There 
it  was,  coming  nearer,  and  not  another  for  ten  minutes. 
She  began  to  sob  and  say  prayers.  The  tramcar  struck 
its  bell  sharply,  it  had  reached  the  corner  of  the  piazza, 
it  would  be  passing  in  another  minute.  She  wrenched 
the  door  open  and  ran  like  a  flying  shadow  down  the 
passage,  and  just  as  the  car  was  at  its  loudest  turned 
the  handle  of  Ingram's  door. 

It  was  not  locked.  She  stood  inside.  The  tramcar 
rumbled  away  into  the  distance.  Ingram — she  nearly 
wept  for  relief — was  breathing  deeply,  was  asleep. 

"But  how  funny,"  she  thought,  after  one  terrified 
glance  at  him  as  he  lay  in  the  bar  of  light  the  street 
lamp  cast  on  the  bed,  thinking  with  a  top  layer  of 
attention  while  underneath  she  was  entirely  concen- 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  457 

trated  on  the  pocket-book,  "how  funny  to  go  to  bed  in 
one's  beard!     .     .     ." 

She  stole  over  to  the  table  and  peered  about  franti- 
cally among  the  things  scattered  on  it,  saw  nothing, 
began  with  breathless  care  to  try  to  open  its  drawer 
noiselessly,  listening  all  the  while  for  the  least  pause  in 
the  breathing  on  the  bed,  and  all  the  while  with  the 
foolish  detached  layer  of  thoughts  running  in  her  head 
like  some  senseless  tune — 

''''Funny  to  go  to  bed  in  a  beard — funny  to  sleep  in  a 
thing  like  that — funny  not  to  take  it  off  at  night  and 
hang  it  up  outside  the  door  with  one's  clothes  and  have 
it  properly  brushed " 

The  drawer  creaked  as  it  opened.  The  regular  breath- 
ing paused.  She  stood  motionless,  hit  rigid  with  terror. 
Then  the  breathing  began  again;  and,  after  all,  there 
was  nothing  in  the  drawer. 

She  looked  round  the  room  in  despair.  On  the  little 
table  by  his  pillow  lay  his  watch  and  handkerchief. 
Nothing  else.  But  in  the  table  was  a  small  drawer. 
She  must  look  in  that,  too;  she  must  go  over  and  look  in 
that;  but  how  to  open  it  so  close  to  his  head  without 
waking  him?  She  crept  across  to  it,  stopping  at  each 
step.  Holding  her  breath  she  waited  and  listened 
before  daring  to  take  another.  The  drawer  was  not 
quite  shut,  and  the  slight  noise  of  pulling  its  chink  a 
little  wider  did  not  interrupt  Ingram's  breathing.  She 
put  in  her  hand  and  drew  out  the  pocket-book,  drew  out 
some  notes — Italian  notes,  the  first  she  found,  a  handful 
of  them — pushed  the  pocket-book  into  the  drawer  again, 
and  was  in  the  act  of  turning  to  run  when  she  was  rooted 
to  the  floor. 

Ingram  was  looking  at  her. 

His  eyes  were  open,  and  he  was  looking  at  her.    Sleep- 


458  THE  PASTORS  WIFE 

ily,  hardly  awake,  like  one  trying  to  focus  a  thought. 
She  stood  fascinated  with  horror,  staring  at  him,  not 
able  to  move,  her  hand  behind  her  back  clutching  the 
money.     Then  he  put  out  his  arm  and  caught  her  dress. 

"Ingeborg?"  he  said  in  a  sleepy  wonder,  still  half 
in  the  deep  dreams  he  had  come  up  out  of,  "You?  My 
little  angel  love — you?     You've  come?  " 

"Yes — yes,"  she  stammered,  trying  to  pull  her  dress 
away,  wild  with  fear,  flinging  herself  as  usual  in  extrem- 
ity on  to  the  first  words  that  came  into  her  head — "Yes, 
yes,  but  I  must  go  back  to  my  room  a  minute — just  one 
minute — please  let  me  go — just  one  minute — I — I've 
forgotten  my  toothbrush " 

And  Ingram,  steeped  in  the  heaviness  of  the  first 
real  sleep  he  had  had  for  nights  and  only  half  awake, 
murmured,  with  the  happy,  foolish  reasonableness  of 
that  condition — 

"Don't  be  long,  then,  sweetest  little  mate,"  and  let 
her  go. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 

TWO  days  later  the  porter  at  the  Meuk  station 
beheld  Frau  Pastor  Dremmel  trying  to  open 
the  door  of  a  third-class  compartment  in  the 
early  afternoon  train  from  Allenstein,  and  going  to  her 
assistance,  there  being  no  other  passenger  to  distract 
him,  was  surprised  to  find  she  had  no  luggage.  Yet 
only  the  week  before  with  his  own  hands  he  had  put  in  a 
trunk  for  her  and  labelled  it  Berlin.  With  the  interest 
of  a  lonely  man  whose  time  is  his  own,  he  inquired 
whether  she  had  lost  it,  and  was  surprised  to  find  she 
did  not  answer.  He  then  told  her,  or  rather  called 
after  her,  for  she  was  moving  away,  that  the  pastoral 
carriage  had  not  yet  come  for  her,  and  was  surprised 
again,  for  again  she  did  not  answer.  He  stood  watch- 
ing her,  wondering  what  was  wrong.  He  was  too  much 
accustomed  to  dilapidations  and  dirt  in  himself  to  see 
them  in  others,  so  that  these  outer  signs  of  exhaustion 
and  prolonged  travelling  escaped  him.  Puzzled,  he 
shook  his  head  as  she  disappeared  through  the  station 
door;  then  he  remembered  that  the  poor  lady  was  an 
Englanderin,  and  was  able  to  turn  away  calmed,  with 
the  satisfaction  of  him  who  has  found  the  right  label 
and  stuck  it  on. 

Meuk,  as  she  passed  through  it,  shook  its  head  over 
her,  too,  consoling  itself  when  she  returned  no  greetings, 
did  not  even  seem  to  see  greetings,  with  the  same  ex- 
planation   and     shrug — Engtiinderin.     Robertlet    and 

459 


460  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

Ditti,  walking  along  neatly  to  afternoon  school,  and 
suddenly  aware  of  the  approach  down  the  street  towards 
them  of  a  disordered  parent  who  not  only  did  not  stop 
but  apparently  did  not  see  them,  murmured  to  each 
other,  being  by  now  well  instructed  by  their  grand- 
mother, the  same  explanation — Engldnderin.  Frau 
Dremmel,  leaning  on  her  window-sill  to  watch  her  charges 
safely  round  the  corner,  and  lingering  a  moment  in  the 
mellow  summer  air,  explained  her  daughter-in-law, 
who  went  by  without  a  glance,  walking  conspicuously 
in  the  middle  of  the  road,  with  no  parcel  in  her  hand  to 
legitimise  her  being  out  and  not  so  much  as  an  umbrella 
to  give  her  a  countenance,  just  with  empty  ungloved 
hands  hanging  down,  and  a  scandalous  scarcity  of 
hairpins,  and  her  clothes  all  twisted,  in  the  same  brief 
manner,  Engldnderin.  Baroness  Glambeck,  driving 
towards  the  town  along  the  shade-flecked  highroad, 
bent  on  one  of  those  errands  of  mercy  that  are  forced  at 
intervals  upon  the  great,  with  a  basket  of  the  prop- 
erties, principally  home-made  jam  and  mittens,  at  her 
feet,  endeavoured  though  vainly  to  mitigate  the  shock 
she  received  on  being  cut  by  her  own  pastor's  wife,  and 
a  pastor's  wife  producing  curiously  the  effect  of  some- 
how being  in  tatters,  by  using  the  same  word  to  the 
female  dependent  who  accompanied  her  on  these  occa- 
sions because  somebody  had  to  carry  the  jam — Eng- 
ldnderin. The  very  birds  in  the  branches,  being  German 
birds,  were  no  doubt  singing  it;  the  dogs,  as  they  met 
her,  scented  misfortune  and  barked  furiously,  in- 
stantly detecting  the  alien,  angered  by  her  battered- 
ness,  discovering  nothing  in  her  clothes  however  dili- 
gently they  sniffed  that  an  honest  German  dog  could  care 
about;  and  when  on  a  lonely  stretch  of  the  road  she  came 
to  a  tramp,  instead  of  begging  he  offered  her  a  drink. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  461 

The  lane  turning  off  to  Kokensee  was  so  lovely  that 
afternoon  in  the  bright  bravery  of  early  summer,  and 
so  glanced  and  shone  and  darted  with  busy  birds  and 
insects  and  the  glory  of  young  leaves  in  the  sun,  that 
the  dingy  human  figure  faltering  along  it  seemed  an 
indecency.  In  that  vigorous  world  what  place  was 
there  for  blind  fatigue?  In  that  world  of  triumph 
what  place  for  a  failure?  It  was  the  sort  of  day  that 
used  to  make  Ingeborg's  heart  lift  up;  now  she  saw 
nothing,  felt  nothing,  except  that  the  sand  was  deep. 

She  began  to  cry  presently  because  the  sand  was 
deep.  It  seemed  to  give  way  on  purpose  beneath  her 
feet,  try  on  purpose  to  make  her  stumble  and  not  get 
home.  The  line  of  roofs  up  against  the  afternoon  sky 
did  not  appear  to  come  any  nearer,  and  yet  she  kept 
on  trying  to  get  home.  The  tears  fell  down  her  face 
as  she  laboured  along.  She  was  afraid  she  wouldn't 
get  home  in  time  before  she  had  to  leave  off  walking 
because  she  couldn't  walk  any  farther.  It  seemed  to 
her  a  dreadful  thing  that  she  who  could  walk  so  well 
should  not  be  able  to  walk  now  and  get  home.  And 
this  white  sand — how  fine  it  was,  how  it  slid  away  on 
each  side  of  one's  feet  wherever  one  put  them !  And  it 
got  into  one's  shoes,  and  one  couldn't  stop  and  empty 
them  for  fear  if  one  sat  down  one  wouldn't  be  able  to 
get  up  again,  and  then  one  wouldn't  get  home.  Slower 
and  more  slowly  she  laboured  along.  By  the  time  she 
reached  the  steep  part  just  before  the  village  she  was 
crawling  like  a  hurt  insect.  She  had  forgotten  to  eat 
on  the  journey,  and  in  Milan  there  had  only  been  the 
rusks. 

The  street  was  asleep,  empty  that  fine  afternoon, 
the  inhabitants  away  at  work  in  the  fields,  and  only 
the  pig  and  the  geese  were  visible  in  the  parsonage 


462  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

yard.  Luckily  the  gate  in  the  wire-netting  fence  that 
shut  off  the  house  and  garden  was  not  latched,  for  she 
could  not  have  opened  it,  but  would  have  stood  there 
holding  on  to  it  and  foolishly  sobbing  till  some  one 
came  and  helped.  The  least  obstacle  now  would  be  a 
thing  that  in  no  way  could  be  got  over.  The  front 
door  was  shut,  and  sooner  than  go  up  the  steps  and  try 
to  get  it  open,  she  went  round  the  path  to  the  side  of 
the  house  where  the  lilacs  grew  and  Robert's  window 
was.  That  way  she  could  reach  the  kitchen,  whose 
door  stood  always  open  and  was  level  with  the  garden. 
Robert  would  be  out  in  his  fields.  She  would  go  in- 
to his  laboratory  and  wait  for  him.  Nobody  but 
Robert  knew  yet.  She  had  come  back  before  the  end 
of  her  leave.  His  shame  was  not  yet  public  property. 
If  he  just  beat  her,  she  thought,  in  a  disinterested  weak 
way, and  there  was  an  end  of  it,  wouldn't  that  do?  Then 
no  one  need  ever  know,  and  he  could  stay  on  in  Kbken- 
see  and  go  on  with  his  work,  and  she  wouldn't  have 
ruined  him.  It  was  the  thought  of  having  ruined 
Robert  that  clove  her  heart  in  two.  To  have  ruined 
him,  when  all  her  ambition  and  all  her  hope  had  been 
to  make  him  so  happy 

Well  did  she  know  that  a  pastor  whose  wife  had 
broken  the  seventh  commandment  would  be  driven  out, 
would  be  impossibly  scandalous  in  any  parish.  And 
her  not  having  broken  it  was  quite  beside  the  point; 
it  didn't  matter  what  you  didn't  do  so  long  as  you 
looked  as  though  you  had  done  it.  And  if  Robert 
killed  her  it  wouldn't  help  him,  either;  he  would  have 
done  the  only  decent  thing,  as  the  Baroness  and  her 
son  Hildebrand  had  said  that  time  long  ago,  and  avenged 
his  honour  in  the  proper  German  way,  but  there  were 
drawbacks  to  avenging  one's  honour — one  was,  illogi- 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  463 

cally,  punished  for  doing  it,  and  even  though  it  were  mild 
punishment,  any  punishment  ended  a  pastor's  career. 

She  crept  round  the  corner  of  the  house.  She  was 
so  tired  that  if  she  had  to  wait  for  him  long  in  his 
laboratory  she  felt  sure  she  wouldn't  be  able  to  keep 
awake.  Well,  if  he  came  in  and  killed  her  while  she 
was  asleep  it  would  be  for  her  the  pleasantest  thing; 
she  was  so  very  tired  that  it  would  be  nice,  she  thought 
vaguely,  to  wake  up  afterwards,  and  find  oneself  com- 
fortably dead.  But  Robert  was  not  in  his  fields.  From 
the  path  beneath  his  window  she  could  see  his  head,  as 
rihe  had  seen  it  hundreds  of  times,  bending  over  his  desk. 

At  the  sight  she  stopped,  and  her  heart  seemed  to 
shrink  into  quite  a  little,  scarcely  beating  thing.  There 
he  was,  her  dishonoured  husband,  the  being  who  in  her 
life  had  been  kindest  to  her,  had  loved  her  most,  still 
working,  still  going  on  doggedly  among  the  ruins  she 
had  created,  up  to  the  last  moment  when  public  opinion, 
brutal  and  stupid,  making  her  the  chief  thing  when  she 
so  utterly  was  not,  while  it  thrust  her  and  her  wishes  and 
intimate  knowledge  aside  as  not  mattering  when,  as  in 
the  question  of  more  children,  or  no  more  children,  they 
so  utterly  did,  would  on  her  sole  account,  on  the  sole 
account  of  what  seemed  to  her  at  that  moment  the  most 
profoundly  naturally  unimportant  thing  in  life,  a  wo- 
man who  had  been  silly,  put  a  stop  to  his  fine  work  and 
refuse  to  give  the  world  a  chance  to  profit  by  his  brains. 

Well,  she  couldn't  think  about  that  now.  She 
couldn't  hold  on  to  any  of  her  thoughts  for  more  than 
an  instant.  She  only  knew  that  the  moment  had  come 
for  facing  him,  and  that  she  was  very  tired.  She  really 
was  extraordinarily  tired.  Her  mind  was  just  as  dim 
and  reluctant  to  move  as  her  body.  Whatever  Robert 
was  going  to  do  to  her  she  would  cling  to  him  with  her 


464  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

arms  round  his  neck  while  he  did  it.  She  was  so  tired 
that  she  thought  if  he  didn't  mind  her  just  putting  her 
arms  round  his  neck  she  would  very  likely  go  to  sleep 
while  he  beat  her.  But  poor  Robert,  she  thought — 
how  hot  it  was  going  to  make  him  to  have  to  be  vio- 
lent, to  have  to  beat!  It  was  not  at  all  good  beating 
weather.  .  .  .  And  it  was  almost  a  pity  to  waste 
punishment  on  somebody  too  tired  to  be  able  properly 
to  appreciate  it,  to  take  it,  as  it  were,  properly  in. 

She  moved  along  down  the  path  towards  the  back 
door.  When  one  came  to  think  of  it  it  was  a  strange 
thing  to  be  going  in  to  Robert  to  be  hurt.  Well,  but 
she  had  deserved  it;  she  perfectly  understood  about 
his  honour  and  its  needs.  Oh,  yes,  she  perfectly  under- 
stood that.  A  man  has  to — what  had  she  just  been 
going  to  think?  What  does  a  man  have  to?  Oh,  well. 
If  only  what  he  did  to  her  could  blot  out  every  con- 
sequence of  what  she  had  done  to  him,  be  a  full,  per- 
fect, and  sufficient — no,  that  was  profane;  tiresome  how 
one  thought  in  the  phrases  of  the  Prayer-book  and  how 
difficult  it  was  if  one  had  had  much  to  do  with  prayer- 
books  not  to  be  profane.  As  it  was,  her  punishment 
wouldn't  do  anybody  any  good  that  she  could  see. 
Funny,  the  punishment  idea.  Of  what  use  was  it  really? 
The  consequences  of  the  things  one  did  were  surely 
enough  in  their  devastating  effect;  why  increase  dev- 
astation? And  forgiveness  didn't  seem  to  be  of  much 
use,  either.  It  blotted  out  the  past,  she  had  heard 
people  in  pulpits  say,  but  it  didn't  blot  out  the  future, 
that  daily  living  among  consequences  which  she  per- 
ceived was  going  to  be  so  dreadful. 

Well,  she  couldn't  think  now.  And  here  was  the 
kitchen  door;  and  here — yes,  wasn't  that  Klara,  staring 
at  her  open-mouthed,  arrested  in  the  middle  of  empty- 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  465 

ing  a  bucket?  Why  did  she  stare  at  her?  Did  she 
then  know? 

"Allmachtiger  Gott!"  exclaimed  Klara,  dropping  the 
bucket. 

Yes,  evidently  Klara  knew,  she  thought,  dragging 
her  dusty  feet  across  the  kitchen  into  the  passage,  and 
allmachtiger  Gott  was  what  one  said  in  Germany  when 
one's  disgraced  mistress  came  back,  instead  of  guten 
Tag.  Well,  it  didn't  matter.  The  dark  little  passage; 
one  almost  had  to  grope  one's  way  along  it  when  the 
front  door  was  shut.  And  it  had  not  been  aired  ap- 
parently since  she  went  away,  and  it  was  heavy  and 
choked  with  kitchen  smell.  She  supposed  it  must  be 
this  thickness  of  atmosphere  that  made  her,  on  Robert's 
doormat  with  her  hand  on  the  latch,  feel  suddenly  so 
very  like  fainting.  And  it  really  was  dark;  surely  it 
didn't  only  seem  dark  because  she  suddenly  couldn't 
see?  Alarmed,  she  remembered  how  she  had  fainted 
after  her  conscience-stricken  journey  back  from  Lucerne. 
Was  she  then  to  go  through  life  making  at  intervals 
conscience-stricken  journeys  back,  and  fainting  at  the 
critical  moment  at  their  end? 

In  terror  lest  she  should  do  it  now  if  she  waited  a 
moment  longer,  and  so  twist  things  round  in  that  dis- 
honourable womanly  way  which  commits  the  wrong 
and  then  bringing  in  the  appeal  of  bodily  weakness 
secures  the  comforting,  secures,  almost,  the  apology, 
she  seized  all  her  courage,  swept  its  fragments  together 
into  a  firm  clutching,  and  opened  the  door. 

Herr  Dremmel  was  at  his  table,  writing.  He  did 
not  look  up. 

"Robert,"  she  said  faintly,  her  back  against  the  door, 
her  hands  behind  her  spread  out  and  clinging  to  it, 
"here  I  am." 


466  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

Herr  Dremmel  continued  writing.  He  was,  to  all 
appearances,  absorbed;  and  his  forehead,  that  hot  after- 
noon, was  covered  with  the  drops  of  concentration. 

"Robert,"  she  said  at  last  again,  in  a  voice  that  shook 
however  hard  she  tried  to  keep  it  steady,  "here  I  am." 

Herr  Dremmel  finished  his  sentence.  Then  he  raised 
his  head  and  looked  at  her. 

Staring  back  at  him  in  misery  and  fear,  and  yet  beside 
the  fear  with  a  dreadful  courage,  she  recognised  the 
look.  It  was  the  look  he  had  when  he  was  collecting 
his  attention,  bringing  it  up  from  distant  deep  places 
to  the  surface,  to  herself.  How  strange  that  he  should 
at  this  moment  have  to  collect  it,  that  it  did  not  in- 
stantly spring  at  her,  that  she  and  the  havoc  she  had 
brought  into  his  life  should  not  be  soaked  into  every 
part  of  his  consciousness ! 

'What  did  you  say,  Ingeborg?"  he  said,  looking  at 
her  with  that  so  recognisable  look. 

For  all  her  study  of  him  she  felt  she  did  not  yet  know 
Robert. 

"I  only  said,"  she  stammered,  "that  I — that  here — 
that  here  I  was.'" 

He  looked  at  her  for  a  further  space  of  silence.  Then 
it  flashed  upon  her  that  he  was,  dreadfully,  pretend- 
ing. He  was  acting.  He  was  going  to  torment  her 
before  punishing  her.     He  was  going  to  be  slowly  cruel. 

Herr  Dremmel,  as  though  he  were  gathering  himself 
together — gathering  himself,  she  thought  watching  him 
and  growing  cold  at  his  uncanniness,  for  a  horrible  spring 
— inquired  of  her  if  she  had  walked. 

'Yes,"  said  Ingeborg  even  more  faintly,  her  eyes 
full  of  watchful  fear. 

He  continued  to  look  at  her,  but  his  hand  while  he  did 
so  felt  about  on  the  table  for  the  pen  he  had  laid  down. 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  467 

She  recognized  this  look,  too — amazing,  horrible, 
how  he  could  act — it  was  the  one  he  had  when,  talking 
to  somebody,  a  new  illumination  of  the  subject  he  was 
writing  about  came  into  his  mind. 

She  felt  sure  now  that  the  worst  was  going  to  happen 
to  her;  but  first  there  was  to  be  torture,  a  long  playing 
about.  These  revealed  depths  of  cunning  cruelty  in 
him,  of  talent  for  cleverest  acting,  froze  her  blood. 
Where  was  Robert,  the  man  of  large  simplicities  she 
believed  she  had  known?  It  was  a  strange  man,  then, 
she  had  been  living  with?  He  had  never,  through  all 
the  years,  been  the  one  she  thought  she  had  married. 

"Please "  she  said,  holding  out  both  her  hands, 

"Robert — don't.     Won't  you — won't  you  be  natural?" 

He  still  looked  at  her  in  silence.  Then  he  said  with 
a  sudden  air  of  remembering,  "Did  you  get  your  boots, 
Ingeborg?" 

This  was  dreadful.  That  he  should  even  talk  about 
the  boots!  Throw  in  her  face  that  paltry  preliminary 
lying. 

"You  know  I  didn't,"  she  said,  tears  of  shame  for 
him  that  he  could  be  so  cruel  coining  into  her  eyes. 

Again  Herr  Dremmel  looked  at  her  as  though  col- 
lecting, as  though  endeavouring  to  remember  and  to 
find. 

"I  know?"  he  repeated,  after  a  pause  of  reflective 
gazing  during  which  Ingeborg  had  flushed  vividly  and 
gone  white  again,  so  much  shocked  was  she  at  the 
glimpse  she  was  getting  into  inhumanity.  It  was  devil- 
ish, she  though  I.  But  Robert  devilish?  Her  universe 
seemed  tumbling  about  her  ears. 

"I  think,"  she  said,  lifting  her  head  with  the  pride 
he  ought  to  have  felt  and  so  evidently,  so  lamentably, 
didn't,  "one  should  give  one's  punishment  like  a  man." 


468  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

There  was  another  pause,  during  which  Herr  Drem- 
mel,  with  his  eyes  on  hers,  appeared  to  ruminate. 

Then  he  said,  "Did  you  have  a  pleasant  time?" 

This  was  fiendish.  Even  when  acting,  thought  Inge- 
borg,  there  were  depths  of  baseness  the  decent  refused 
to  portray. 

"I  think,"  she  said  in  a  trembling  voice,  "if  you 
wouldn't  mind  leaving  off  pretending — oh,"  she  broke 
off,  pressing  her  hands  together,  "what's  the  good, 
Robert?  What's  the  good?  Don't  let  us  waste  time. 
Don't  make  it  worse,  more  hideous — you  got  my  letter 
— you  know  all  about  it " 

"Your  letter?"  said  Herr  Dremmel. 

She  begged  him,  she  entreated  him  to  leave  off  pre- 
tending. "Don't,  don't  keep  on  like  this,"  she  be- 
sought— "it's  such  a  dreadful  way  of  doing  it — it's  so 
unworthy " 

"Ingeborg,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  "will  you  not  culti- 
vate calm?  You  have  journeyed  and  you  have  walked, 
but  you  have  done  neither  sufficiently  to  justify  intem- 
perateness.  Perhaps,  if  you  must  be  intemperate,  you 
will  have  the  goodness  to  go  and  be  so  in  your  own  room. 
Then  we  shall  neither  of  us  disturb  the  other." 

"No,"  said  Ingeborg,  wringing  her  hands,  "no.  I 
won't  go.  I  won't  go  into  any  other  room  till  you've 
finished  with  me." 

"But,"  said  Herr  Dremmel,  "I  have  finished  with 
you.  And  I  wish,"  he  added,  pulling  out  his  watch, 
"  to  have  tea.     I  am  driving  to  my  fields  at  five  o'clock." 

"Oh,  Robert,"  she  begged,  inexpressibly  shocked, 
he  meant  to  go  on  tormenting  her  then  indefinitely? 
— "please,  please  do  whatever  you're  going  to  do  to 
me  and  get  it  over.  Here  I  am  only  waiting  to  be 
punished " 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  469 

"Punished?"  repeated  Herr  Dremmel. 

"Why,"  cried  Ingeborg,  her  eyes  bright  with  grief 
and  shame  for  this  steady  persistence  in  baseness,  "why, 
I  don't  think  you're  fit  to  punish  me !  You're  not  fit 
to  punish  a  decent  woman.     You're  contemptible!" 

Herr  Dremmel  stared.  'This,"  he  then  said,  "is 
abuse.  At  least,"  he  added,  "it  bears  a  close  resem- 
blance to  that  which  in  a  reasonable  human  being  would 
be  abuse.  However,  Ingeborg,  speech  in  you  does  not, 
as  I  have  often  observed,  accurately  represent  meaning. 
I  should  rather  say,"  he  amended,  "a  meaning." 

She  moved  across  to  the  table  to  him,  her  eyes  shin- 
ing. He  held  his  pen  ready  to  go  on  writing  so  soon 
as  she  should  be  good  enough  to  leave  off  interrupting. 

"Robert,"  she  said,  leaning  with  both  hands  on  the 
table,  her  voice  shaking,  "I — I  never  thought  I'd  have 
to  be  ashamed  of  you.  I  could  bear  anything  but  hav- 
ing to  be  ashamed  of  you " 

"Perhaps,  then,  Ingeborg,"  said  Herr  Dremmel, 
"you  will  have  the  goodness  to  go  and  be  ashamed  of 
me  in  your  own  room.  Then  we  shall  neither  of  us 
disturb  the  other." 

"You  are  being  so  horrible  that  you're  twisting  things 
all  wrong,  and  putting  me  in  the  position  of  having  to 
forgive  you  when  it's  you  who've  got  to  forgive  me— 

"Pray,  then,  Ingeborg,  go  and  forgive  me  in  your 

own  room.     Then  we  shall  neither  of  us " 

'You're   being    cruel — oh,    but    it's    unbelievable — 


you,  my  husband — you're  playing  with  me  like  a  cat 
with  a  miserable  mouse,  a  miserable,  sorry  mouse, 
something  helpless  that  can't  do  anything  back  and 
wouldn't  if  it  could — and  see  how  you  make  me  talk, 
when  it's  you  who  ought  to  be  talking!  Do,  do,  Robert, 
begin  to  talk — begin  to  say  things,  do  things,  get  it  over. 


470  THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE 

You've  had   my  letter,   you   know  perfectly   what   I 
did—" 

"I  have  had  no  letter,  Ingeborg." 

"How  dreadful  of  you  to  say  that!"  she  cried,  her 
face  full  of  horror  at  him.  "When  you  know  you  have 
and  you  know  I  know  you  have — that  letter  I  left  for 
you — on  this  table " 

"I  have  seen  no  letter  on  this  table." 

"  But  I  put  it  here — I  put  it  here " 

She  lifted  her  hand  to  point  out  passionately  the  very 
spot  to  him;  and  underneath  her  hand  was  the  letter. 

Her  heart  gave  one  great  bump  and  seemed  to  stop 
beating.  The  letter  was  where  she  had  put  it  and  was 
unopened. 

She  looked  up  at  Herr  Dremmel.  She  turned  red;  she 
turned  white;  she  tasted  the  very  extremity  of  shame. 
"I — beg  your  pardon,"  she  whispered. 

Herr  Dremmel  wore  a  slight  air  of  apology.  "One 
omits,  occasionally,  to  notice,"  he  said. 

"Yes,"  breathed  Ingeborg. 

She  stood  quite  still,  her  eyes  on  his  face. 

He  pulled  out  his  watch.  "Perhaps  now,  Ingeborg," 
he  said,  "you  will  be  so  good  as  to  see  about  tea.  I 
am  driving  to  my  fields " 

"Yes,"  breathed  Ingeborg. 

He  bent  over  his  work  and  began  writing  again. 

She  put  out  her  hand  and  slowly  took  up  the  letter. 
Tradition,  copious  imbibing  of  the  precepts  of  bishops, 
were  impelling  her  towards  that  action  frequently  fatal 
to  the  permanent  peace  of  families,  the  making  of  a 
clean  breast. 

"Do  you — do  you — do  you  want  to "  she  began 

tremblingly,  half  holding  out  the  letter. 

Then  her  voice  failed;  and  her  principles  failed;  and 


THE  PASTOR'S  WIFE  471 

the  precepts  of  a  lifetime  failed;  and  she  put  it  in  her 
pocket. 

"It's — stale,"  she  whispered,  explaining. 

But  Herr  Dremmel  went  on  writing.  He  had  for- 
gotten the  letter. 

She  turned  away  and  went  slowly  towards  the  door. 

In  the  middle  of  the  room  she  hesitated,  and  looked 
back.     "  I — I'd  like  to  kiss  you,"  she  faltered. 

But  Herr  Dremmel  went  on  writing.  He  had  for- 
gotten Ingeborg. 


THE   END 


THE    COUNTRY    LIFE   PRESS 
GARDEN   CITY,    N.  Y. 


>Mi— - 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 
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N0V2  3  1987 


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'  SMITH   BROS 
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